Treatment of cancer with radiation therapy is very common, but always hazardous because the radiation usually kills healthy cells as well. Here’s one promising approach to reducing the risk…

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health, may be hot on the heels of a Holy Grail of cancer therapy: They have found a way to not only protect healthy tissue from the toxic effects of radiation treatment, but also increase tumor death.
…
[They] have identified a biochemical signaling pathway that can profoundly influence what happens to both cancerous and healthy cells when they are exposed to radiation. In mouse experiments, they found that blocking a molecule called thrombospondin-1 from binding to its cell surface receptor, called CD47, affords normal tissues nearly complete protection from both standard and very high doses of radiation.

[Source:Science Daily]

While they haven’t worked out the reasons why blocking the signaling pathway works, the results are good enough to continue research for radiation therapy, and to extend research into areas such as wound healing, sickle-cell anemia, and heart attacks. Note: This is still laboratory work, though ready for verification studies.