Clinical trials have begun on a promising drug designed to remove radioactive particles from the body. Here’s how it works
fatal, breaking bonds in our DNA and causing widespread organ failureBut the route of delivery matters. We can dodge or shield ourselves from external sources of radiation like X-ray machines. Internal contamination, however, must be removed to arrest its harmful effects.For decades, if you had radiation poisoning, your options were limited.
“You can do a lot of damage to the mineral balance in your body with prolonged use,” says Julian Rees, a co-founder of HOPO Therapeutics, a company investigating commercial applications of HOPO 14-1, and a former postdoc under Abergel at LBNL.To build a better chelator for these radioactive substances, scientists looked to nature—specifically, bacteria and how they transport iron.
Inspired by these microbial chemists and using the chemical similarities between iron and heavy metals, Kenneth Raymond and Patricia Durbin—Abergel’s graduate advisors at UC Berkeley—HOPO 14-1, the drug currently in clinical trials, emerged as a leading candidate—with an affinity for uranium, neptunium, plutonium, americium, and curium. Some of these metals are large, so you want a chelator “to be able to fully wrap around it,” says Abergel.
But Sascha Goonewardena, a cardiologist at the University of Michigan and physician-investigator for the Phase I clinical trial, is perhaps most excited that HOPO 14-1 comes in pill form. “It’s an easier and more practical solution than other things that are out there right now,” Goodnewardena says. Pills could be air-dropped into contaminated areas, for example, so that people could self-administer the drug without needlessly exposing first responders to radiation.
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