Author: Hekim N1, Cetin Z2, Nikitaki Z3, Cort A4, Saygili IE5.
Affiliation: 1Department of Medical Biochemistry, School of Medicine, SANKO University, Gaziantep, Turkey. 2Department of Medical Biology & Genetics, School of Medicine, SANKO University, Gaziantep, Turkey. 3Department of Physics, School of Applied Mathematical and Physical Sciences, National Technical University of Athens, Zografou 15780, Athens, Greece. 4Department of Medical Biochemistry, School of Medicine, SANKO University, Gaziantep, Turkey; Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, Faculty of Health Sciences, SANKO University, Gaziantep, Turkey. 5Department of Medical Biochemistry, School of Medicine, SANKO University, Gaziantep, Turkey. Electronic address: isaygili@sanko.edu.tr.
Conference/Journal: Cancer Lett.
Date published: 2015 Apr 21
Other:
Pages: S0304-3835(15)00284-0 , Special Notes: doi: 10.1016/j.canlet.2015.04.016 , Word Count: 217
Radiation therapy (RT) is a well-established but still under optimization brunch of Cancer Therapy (CT). RT uses electromagnetic waves or charged particles aiming to malignant cells in order to kill them, by accumulating energy onto them. The issue at stake for RT, as well as for any other Cancer Therapy technique, is always to kill only cancer cells, without affecting the surrounding healthy ones. This perspective of CT is usually described under the terms "specificity" and "selectivity". Specificity and selectivity are the ideal goal, but as ideal is never entirely achieved. Thus, in addition to killing healthy cells, changes and effects are observed in immune system, after irradiation. In this review, we mainly focus on the effects of ionizing radiation on the immune system and its components like bone marrow. Additionally, we are interested in the effects and benefits of low-dose ionizing radiation on the hematopoiesis and immune response. Low dose radiation has been shown to induce biological responses like inflammatory responses, innate immune system activation and DNA repair (adaptive response). This review reveals the fact that there are many unanswered questions regarding the role of radiation as either immune-activating (low dose) or immunosuppressive (high dose) agent.
Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd.
KEYWORDS:
Danger signals; Immune response; Inflammation; Ionizing radiation; Low doses; Programmed cell death
PMID: 25911239