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Cardiovascular Risk from Exposure to Low-dose and Low-dose-rate Ionizing Radiation

Project Reference: 295823
Activity Code: Fission-2011-3.1.1
Coordinator:Helmholtz Zentrum München - German Research Center for Environmental Health

Description:

Epidemiological evidence has established a link between cardiovascular disease and exposure of the heart and major vessels to doses above 500mGy. At lower doses the evidence for a detrimental effect is inconclusive. In part, this is due to the lack of appropriate epidemiological studies, coupled with lack of knowledge of the processes involved that is needed for construction of mathematical models. The ProCardio consortium will study cardiovascular outcomes in childhood cancer survivors where the radiation doses given to the heart are available. These data will be interrogated using new mathematical models developed from the data from our molecular and biological studies. These will use state-of-the-art technologies to map cardiovascular changes after photon irradiation at both low doses and low dose rates. This will be complemented by comparative studies using high LET irradiation. We will apply an integrative approach to combine transcriptional (mRNA and miRNA) and translational (proteomics) studies to understand the disease processes. High throughput proteomics (ICPL, SILAC and label-free analysis) will be used to identify new biomarkers of radiation-induced cardiovascular disease for future molecular epidemiological studies. These will be validated using the archives of cardiovascular tissue samples from the Mayak facility.

Project Details:

Start Date: 2011-10-01
End Date: 2014-09-30
EU Contribution: 2,998,386 EURO
Total Costs: 5,495,179 EURO
Funding Scheme: Small or medium-scale focused research project
Programme Acronym: FP7-EURATOM-FISSION
Subprogramme Area: Contribution to low-dose risk research in Europe
Administrative Contact Person: Jürgen ERTEL (Dr)

Partners:

  • Agenzia Nazionale per le Nuove Tecnologie, l'Energia e lo Sviluppo Economico Sostenibile, Italy
  • GABO:MI Gesellschaft für Ablauforganisation: Milliarium mbH & CO KG GAB O, Germany
  • Health Protection Agency HPA, UK
  • Institut Gustave Roussy, France
  • Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheiden Milieu*National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Netherlands
  • Federal State Unitary Enterprise Southern Urals Biophysics Institute of Federal Medicobiological Agency, Russian Federation
  • Academisch Medisch Centrum bij de Universiteit van Amsterdam, Netherlands
  • The University of Birmingham, UK
  • Fundacio Centre de Recerca en Epidemiologia Ambiental - CREAL, Spain
  • GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung, Germany
  • Studiecentrum voor Kernenergie, Belgium