Micaela Cunha

Particle therapy is increasingly attractive for treating tumors and the number of facilities offering it is rising worldwide. Due to the well-known enhanced effectiveness of ions, it is of utmost importance to plan treatments with great care to ensure tumor killing and healthy tissues sparing. Hence, the accurate quantification of the relative biol...

Intra- and inter-individual variability is a well-known aspect of biological responses of cells observed at low doses of radiation, whichever the phenomenon considered (adaptive response, bystander effects, genomic instability, etc.). There is growing evidence that low-dose phenomena are related to cell mechanisms other than DNA damage and misrepai...

The biological phenomena observed at low doses of ionizing radiation (adaptive response, bystander effects, genomic instability, etc.) are still not well understood. While at high irradiation doses, cellular death may be directly linked to DNA damage, at low doses, other cellular structures may be involved in what are known as non-(DNA)-targeted ef...

Modern radiotherapy (RT) techniques are providing increasingly higher conformality, a potential invaluable clinical benefit to the patient. Consequently, in both single and multi-fractionated RT, patient misalignments and changing internal anatomy are also becoming more critical since higher conformality may equally represent a higher risk of targe...

Cyclotrons capable of accelerating protons up to about 20 MeV have been worldwide installed. Although their purpose is mainly positron emission tomography (PET) radioisotope production, they are equipped with several beam lines suitable for scientific research. Each beam line may typically deliver proton currents up to 150 μA (1015 particles/s). Ra...

Biophysical models are useful tools for predicting the biological effects of ionizing radiation. From a practical point of view, these models can help clinicians to optimize the radiation absorbed dose delivered to patients in particle therapy. The biophysical model NanOx was recently developed to predict cell survival fractions in the context of r...

NanOx is a biophysical model recently developed in the context of hadrontherapy to predict the cell survival probability from ionizing radiation. It postulates that this may be factorized into two independent terms describing the cell response to two classes of biological events that occur in the sequence of an irradiation: the local lethal events...

NanOx is a new biophysical model that aims at predicting the biological effect of ions in the context of hadron therapy. It integrates the fully-stochastic nature of ionizing radiation both at micrometric and nanometric scales and also takes into account the production and diffusion of reactive chemical species. In order to further characterize the...

Purpose: Our study aimed at evaluating: 1) whether well established variability in radioadaptive response (AR) in various donor blood lymphocytes might be attributed to inter-individual differences in radiosensitivity to different low dose levels; 2) whether AR is reproducibly present over time in the lymphocytes of AR-positive individuals. Experim...

The main challenge of radiotherapy is to focus the irradiation dose in cancer cells while preserving the healthy cells surrounding the tumor. Among the different strategies, the use of radiosensitizers aims to amplify the destructive effects of dose in the tumor [1]. Nanoparticles of heavy metals such as gold, are particularly promising radiosensit...

Background: Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) are resistant to standard treatments, partly due to cancer stem cells (CSCs) localised in hypoxic niches. Compared to X-rays, carbon ion irradiation relies on better ballistic properties, higher relative biological effectiveness and the absence of oxygen effect. Hypoxia-inducible factor-1α...

The evolution of technology in radiotherapy nowadays allows us to deliver much higher doses to the target volumes, thanks to better absorbed dose distribution accuracy and conformation, while better sparing healthy tissues. In photon radiotherapy, higher precision usually entails employing small and moving beams. This emphasizes the role of in vivo...

The interaction between ionizing radiation and living tissues is characterized by stochastic phenomena with non-negligible consequences both in terms of physical dosimetry and induced biological effects. The present work addresses three issues concerning radiotherapy and the estimation of radiation risks for health, by means of modeling tools and M...

The number of facilities that offer tumor treatment with particle therapy has been increasing substantially over the past decades. The dose distribution deposited by ions, and for the heaviest, their higher biological effectiveness, make them more interesting to destroy localized tumors while sparing healthy tissues. Such an effectiveness is quanti...

Objectifs Les nanotechnologies ont une présence croissante en médecine et en particulier en cancérologie. Dans le cas des dosimètres miniaturisés, les dimensions micrométriques et nanométriques peuvent atteindre les limites statistiques du concept de dose et produire des mesures aléatoires à l’image de la microdosimétrie. Pour caractériser de maniè...

Biological effects induced by ionization radiations is a complex function of many parameters. Some are related to the type of irradiated cells and their environment. Some others are related to the irradiation characteristics. While considering the specific case of swift ions, not only the dose of irradiation but also the ion charge, the ion energy,...

Radiotherapy (RT) is nowadays, after surgery the most frequently used treatment of cancer. For predicted clinical outcomes it is of importance assuring that the treatment plan is correctly delivered without dose deviations, namely target underdosage and/or organ-at-risk overdosage. For that, a new multipixel imaging technique for real-time dose ver...

Modern radiotherapy (RT) techniques provide increasingly higher conformality, a potential invaluable clinical benefit to the patient. Consequently, in both single and multi-fractionated RT, patient misalignments and changing internal anatomy are also becoming more critical since higher conformality may equally represent a higher risk of target unde...

2012 is the penultimate year of financial support by the CPER 2007-2013 for ETOILE's research program, sustained by the PRRH at the University Claude Bernard. As with each edition we make the annual review of the research in this group, so active for over 12 years now. Over the difficulties in the decision-making process for the implementation of t...

Different cyclotron models capable of accelerating protons up to 20MeV have been worldwide installed. Although their purpose is mainly positron emission tomography (PET) radioisotope production, they are equipped with several beam lines suitable for scientific research. Each beam line may typically deliver proton currents up to 150 μA (1×1015 parti...

Radiotherapy (RT) is nowadays, after surgery, among the most commonly used treatment regarding cancer. For predicted clinical outcomes it is of importance assuring that the treatment plan is correctly delivered without dose deviations, namely target underdosage and/or organ-at-risk overdosage. For that, a new multi-pixel imaging technique for real-...

Magnetic resonance is frequently used to obtain medical images for diagnosis. To perform these exams high magnetic fields are applied, implying at least ±10,000 times the value of the Earth basal field (3-7·10 -5T). In our experimental study we used adherent cells (rat peritoneal macrophages), cultured in standard conditions (37 °C, 5% CO 2) with a...