Sally Amundson
Columbia University, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research
Radiation damages the body in ways that depend on the type of radiation and how fast the dose arrives. This matters in two very different settings.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Biophysics
Pharmacology
- Topics
radiobiology
acute radiation syndrome
radiation countermeasures
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jun 2030
What they work on
- Test whether MIIST305, a drug that protects the gut from x-ray damage, also improves survival and reduces gut injury in rats exposed to nuclear-device-spectrum neutrons or ultra-high dose rate radiation.
- Measure biomarkers of gut integrity and inflammation in serum and feces of irradiated rats to evaluate both MIIST305 and lung-, kidney- and heart-targeted mitigators from partner projects for protective effects on the gut.
- Test whether combining three organ-targeted radiation mitigator drugs reduces all-cause mortality and improves survivor health in rats exposed to x-rays, nuclear-device-spectrum neutrons or ultra-high dose rate radiation.
- Quantify how heavy-ion radiotherapy effects on pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma depend on linear energy transfer, using engineered PDA mouse models irradiated with custom extended heavy-ion beams at Brookhaven.
- Test whether drugs that trigger ferroptosis, an iron-dependent cell death, enhance heavy-ion tumor killing in pancreatic cancer, and use single-LET cell irradiations to assess whether clinical helium-ion beams produce similar effects.
More about the research
One is protecting people after a nuclear emergency. The other is using radiation as a precise weapon against tumors. Both projects ask how radiation quality changes biological damage. One tests drugs that limit injury to healthy organs after radiation like that from a nuclear detonation. The other measures how heavy-ion beams kill pancreatic tumors and whether a drug-triggered cell death pathway can strengthen them.
Why it matters
There is still a need for drugs that limit gut, lung, kidney and heart injury after high-dose radiation exposure, such as from a nuclear detonation. Testing candidates against realistic neutron and ultra-high dose rate exposures, alone and combined, could identify treatments that improve survival and survivors' health. For pancreatic cancer patients, understanding how beam energy density interacts with ferroptosis-inducing drugs could help make heavy-ion radiotherapy more effective and more cost effective.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Rongxiao Zhang
University of Missouri-Columbia, MO·Biomedical Engineering
Build beam models for FLASH-capable linear accelerators, the machines that produce the radiation, so planning software can accurately predict the dose that ultra-high dose rate electron beams deliver.
Albert Koong
University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, TX·Medicine & Clinical Research
Identify the HIF2-dependent factor that cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) secrete to push macrophages toward an immune-suppressing M2 state in pancreatic cancer, using mass spectrometry, and determine how it is produced and how it alters macrophages.
J. Mark Cline
Wake Forest University, NC·Medicine & Clinical Research
Identify and share patterns of late disease, such as diabetes, heart fibrosis, and kidney disease, in rhesus monkeys followed for years after whole-body radiation exposure.
The school
Columbia University: 89 labs on PI Pages, $1.4B a year on research, 625 research doctorates a year.
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