Abstract
Biological dosimetry is an internationally recognized method for quantifying and estimating radiation dose following suspected or verified excessive exposure to ionising radiation. In severe radiation accidents where a large number of people are potentially affected, it is possible to distinguish irradiated from non-irradiated people in order to initiate appropriate medical care if necessary. In addition to severe incidents caused by technical failure, environmental disasters, military actions, or criminal abuse, there are also radiation accidents in which only one or a few individuals are affected in the frame of occupational or medical exposure. The requirements for biological dosimetry are fundamentally different for these two scenarios. In particular, for large-scale radiation accidents, pre-screening methods are necessary to increase the throughput of samples for a rough first-dose categorization. The rapid development and increasing use of omics methods in research as well as in individual applications provides new opportunities for biological dosimetry. In addition to the discovery and search for new biomarkers, dosimetry assays based on omics technologies are becoming increasingly interesting and hold great potential, especially for large-scale dosimetry. In the following review, the different areas of biological dosimetry, the problems in finding suitable biomarkers, the current status of biomarker research based on omics, the potential applications of assays using omics technologies, and also the limitations for the different areas of biological dosimetry are discussed.
Highlights
Biological dosimetry is an internationally recognized method for quantifying and estimating radiation dose following suspected or verified excessive exposure to ionising radiation
In a comparison of laboratories belonging to the RENEB network (Running the European Network of Biodosimetry and Retrospective Physical Dosimetry), Abend et al were able to show that dose reconstruction based on FDXR and DDB2 is reproducible across different methods, protocols, and laboratories
Proteomics is a snap shot of all proteins expressed at a certain time and under specific environmental conditions, which can be analysed qualitatively and quantitatively
Summary
“Omics” is the generic term for the analysis of molecular biological processes at different regulatory levels such as that of DNA, mRNA, proteins, and metabolites. Technologies for the analysis of omics data are high-throughput methods that can be used to image many molecular events simultaneously. This has enabled an improved understanding of biological processes in their entirety. The methods are based on the detection of radiation-induced changes in the cells on the molecular or cytogenetic level Established cytogenetic methods, such as the quantification of dicentric chromosomes, can reliably estimate radiation exposure but have the disadvantage of being relatively time-consuming. Omics methods can potentially contribute to the discovery of new radiation-dependent biomarkers as well as to the development of novel analytical methods for biological dosimetry in order to fill this research gap. This review discusses the state of the art in omics-based biomarker research, the challenges for biological dosimetry, and the potential use of novel omics-based techniques in various radiation scenarios
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