ABSTRACT
Since the dawn of the nuclear era, radiation scientists have recognized the importance of protecting normal tissues-but not tumors-during radiotherapy and the need to apply this technology to related scenarios such as space travel for astronauts, radiation exposure from nuclear accidents, and as countermeasures for radiation terrorism (Weiss and Landauer 2009). Radiation therapy is widely used to treat cancer, with more than half of all patients receiving some form of radiotherapy as a component of their multidisciplinary care. Although the search for such agents has now lasted more than 60 years, only a single chemical agent, amifostine, has been translated to limited clinical use. e search continues for radiation protectors and mitigators with a renewed sense of urgency (Williams et al. 2010) largely as a response to world political pressures such as the 9/11/2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York, the development of non-peaceful radiation capabilities by rogue nations, and environmental catastrophes such as the 2011 earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan that destroyed most of a nuclear power facility.
