Holy Crap! A Vaccine Against Radiation!

[Tuckerfan]

There’s a lot of implications for this.

A second University of Pittsburgh team used gene therapy to deliver a compound called manganese superoxide dismutase-plasmid liposome (MnSOD-PL) to mice, and then exposed them to radiation.

The compound is known to protect cells from the effects of radiation. Dr. Joel Greenberger, a cancer specialist who led the study, has been trying to find effective ways to get the compound into vulnerable cells in the body.

Untreated mice irradiated at higher doses lost weight and died fairly rapidly due to bone marrow damage. But mice treated with the gene therapy lost no weight, had little bone-marrow damage, and lived longer, the researchers told the meeting.

The focus of the treatments is for protecting people who might have been exposed to the effects of a “dirty bomb” set off by terrorists. I can’t help but think that this would be a boon for astronauts, since they can get exposed to high levels of radiation while in space.

A related story is this.

Studies utilizing a mouse model of lethal whole body gamma irradiation suggest that Radilex might have possible applications for treatment of neutropenia and anemia following radiation exposure. In a preliminary experiment performed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee, animals exposed to lethal radiation (6 Gray to 8 Gray) but which survived following Radilex treatment apparently had higher levels of the infection-fighting white blood cells and higher levels of oxygen-carrying red blood cells than did animals that were not treated with Radilex and that died after radiation exposure.

[Antigen]

All right! Shoot me up, I’m going to go tanning!

[Sunspace]

@Antigen

All right! Shoot me up, I’m going to go tanning!

Tanning, heck, I’m going to go work outside at the space station! In my shirtsleeves and light summer space-suit!

[Martini_Enfield]

I was wondering when they were going to invent Rad-Away.

Now, where’s the Power Armour?

A Fallout reference, for those of you who haven’t had the pleasure…

[Tuckerfan]

Do you mean like this? Because it was up for sale. Or do you mean like this? That one’s really lame and only shoots foam rubber at people, though it is being built by the Japanese, so they’ve probably got all the kinks worked out of it by now and are figuring out the best spot to put the cup holder.