Proceedings

EPJ D - Ions that love DNA to bits

Ions that love DNA to bits

Low energy carbon ions have been directed to small DNA strand. The results provide new information of the mechanisms of DNA damage during ion beam therapy, also called hadron therapy.

The clinical success of hadron therapy, where proton and ions with energies of below 150 MeV are used in the treatment of many tumour types, has heightened the interest in the fundamental interactions between ion beams and with biomolecules. Along the radiation track of the primary heavy particle, a large number of ions lose their energy due to inelastic scattering and many low energy secondary fragments (electrons and ions) are produced within the tissue. If such secondary species are formed in the close vicinity of the nucleus of living cell, they can cause significant DNA damage. However the molecular mechanisms by which such damage occurs remains unclear and is a clear limitation to the further development of ion beam therapy.

The recent work published in EPJ D used a mass spectrometer to reveal the length and chemical composition of the fragments caused by carbon ion beam. The fragmentation yield mainly depends on the nucleobase composition and not on the other components of DNA, i.e. sugar and phosphate group. This result tells us which parts of the DNA are most susceptible to such radiation damage and may then be used to improve radiotherapy techniques.

This was our first experience of publishing with EPJ Web of Conferences. We contacted the publisher in the middle of September, just one month prior to the Conference, but everything went through smoothly. We have had published MNPS Proceedings with different publishers in the past, and would like to tell that the EPJ Web of Conferences team was probably the best, very quick, helpful and interactive. Typically, we were getting responses from EPJ Web of Conferences team within less than an hour and have had help at every production stage.
We are very thankful to Solange Guenot, Web of Conferences Publishing Editor, and Isabelle Houlbert, Web of Conferences Production Editor, for their support. These ladies are top-level professionals, who made a great contribution to the success of this issue. We are fully satisfied with the publication of the Conference Proceedings and are looking forward to further cooperation. The publication was very fast, easy and of high quality. My colleagues and I strongly recommend EPJ Web of Conferences to anyone, who is interested in quick high-quality publication of conference proceedings.

On behalf of the Organizing and Program Committees and Editorial Team of MNPS-2019, Dr. Alexey B. Nadykto, Moscow State Technological University “STANKIN”, Moscow, Russia. EPJ Web of Conferences vol. 224 (2019)

ISSN: 2100-014X (Electronic Edition)

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