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Latest News
Low Dose Program Investigators' Workshop
January 21-23, 2008
Please mark your calendars!
The next DOE Low Dose Program Investigators's Workshop will be held in Washington D.C. Attendance at this Workshop is required for every project Primary Investigator, and encouraged for one or two others of your research team. As always, each participant shoudl prepare a poster presenting their latst research accomplishments. Additional information will be provided as it becomes available.
The Department of Energy’s Office of Biological and Environmental Research is pleased to announce the VII Low Dose Program Investigators’ Workshop. The workshop will take place from January 21 through noon on January 23, 2008, at the Wardman-Park Marriott in Washington, DC. Details on meeting logistics, including the workshop agenda, abstract submission information, and hotel location and reservation information, may be found on the workshop website at http://www.orau.gov/lowdose2008. (The workshop agenda is still in the planning stages, but will be posted in the near future.)
The Workshop is intended to provide an opportunity for the Program investigators to discuss successes, problems, and challenges of your research. As primary investigators of a project, you must submit an abstract and bring at least one poster highlighting recent progress in their research. Some of you will be asked to give platform presentations, and the Workshop will also host several guest speakers.
Please extend this invitation to relevant co-PIs, postdoctoral fellows, or graduate students who should attend the meeting. All meeting participants must register to attend; please note there is no registration fee.
All abstracts are due on Friday, November 30. Please identify who will be presenting the poster, the PI overseeing the work, and any co-PIs involved in the project. We encourage extended abstracts, but please limit them to two pages or less.
We look forward to seeing you in January.
The Low Dose Radiation Research
Program 2007 Update
(Click here to see more)
New Calls for Proposals Delayed
Calls for new proposals for the Low Dose Radiation Research Program have been delayed due to the government budget currently being on a continuing resolution. We antipate the new call to come out within a few months.
Information on 210 Po-a toxic
alpha emitter
Polonium-210 is a high specific activity alpha emitting radionuclide. 210Po is a daughter product of decay of the uranium-series so that it is present in small amounts in the environment. Thus, it is normally present in small amounts in the body and makes up part of our natural background radiation exposure. It has recently come of public interest since Mr. Alexander Litvinenko apparently ingested a lethal dose of the material that resulted in his death in about 22 days.
210Polonium is a daughter product of Radon decay. Because Po has a short physical half-life (138 days), it has a very high specific activity (4,500 Ci/g), making it very radioactive per unit of mass. The data suggest that between 3 and 10% of the ingested 210Po is taken up in the body and is rather uniformly distributed throughout the soft tissues. It remains in the blood for a relatively long period of time. When it decays it produces a high energy 5.3 MeV alpha particle, similar to that of plutonium. This makes it very effective per unit of activity as well as per unit of dose in producing biological damage when internally deposited. Thus, it requires only a very small mass (about 10 mg) of 210Po to be ingested to result in a high lethal radiation dose.
In animal studies it was determined that 70 mCi/Kg body weight resulted in acute lethality in dogs, cats and rabbits. These animals died within about 30 days from an “acute” radiation syndrome that was very similar to that seen in humans following whole body radiation exposure to high doses of low LET radiation. It has been suggested that micro gram quantities were ingested by Mr. Litvinenko that resulted in his death.
Additional research is needed to determine effective ways to remove 210Po from the body to limit the dose and decrease the risk from ingested or inhaled materials.
Chief Scientist Chosen for
Low Dose Program
Dr. Mary Helen Barcellos-Hoff of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) has been named Program Chief Scientist for DOE's Low Dose Radiation Research Program. In this capacity, Dr. Barcellos-Hoff will provide a variety of scientific and technical assistance to the Office of Biological and Environmental Research. Dr. Barcellos-Hoff's current research interests are the effects of low-dose x-rays and charged-particle radiations on stromal-epithelial interactions during mammary carcinogenesis and mechanisms by which the protein TGF-beta mediates physiological and neoplastic processes in tissues.
NASA RADIATION NRA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC) has released a NASA Research Announcement (NRA) for Ground-Based Studies in Radiation Biology, NNJ06ZSA001N, entitled "Ground-Based Studies in Radiation Biology." This NRA solicits ground-based proposals for the Space Radiation Program Element of the Human Research Program in the area of Space Radiation Biology utilizing beams of high energy heavy ions simulating space radiation at the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL), at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) in Upton, New York.
Visit the website: http://nspires.nasaprs.com/external/
Radiation Countermeasures Center of Research Excellence (RadCCORE)
Request for Pilot Project Proposals
High-Throughput Minimally-Invasive Radiation Biodosimetry
Request for Pilot Project Proposals
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