Berkeley Lab Wins Grant for Radiation Treatment

Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory recently received a grant of nearly $1 million to help further research treatment options for the effects of exposure to radioactive material.

Lawrence Berkeley researchers were awarded one of five grants from a $4 million pool from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Led by UC Berkeley chemistry professor Kenneth Raymond, the team received $998,325, the second-largest sum of money after a University of Florida team that received $1 million.

The institute hopes that the grants will result in the continued development of potential treatments in case of a terrorist attack or accidental exposure to radioactive material, according to a statement from the institute.

The grant was intended for teams that work with a process called radionuclide chelation, which is a process that uses compounds that bind with radioactive agents and eliminate them from the body, according to a press release from the Berkeley lab.

"The word 'chelation' comes from the Greek word for crab," said Patricia Durbin, a senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who is on the team. "It is like the compounds have chemical claws that grab onto the metal ion and encapsulate it."

Part of the focus of the project is to scale up the production of these compounds, which have previously been produced only in quantities of a few grams, Durbin said.

This specific grant lasts 18 months, but researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have been working on these treatments for the past thirty years, she said.

Previously, the chemical aspects of the project have been funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, while the biological side has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, Durbin said.

This particular grant will cover both aspects of the project.

The team currently has two compounds that can be mixed into a cocktail in order to create an effective treatment for exposure to radioactivity, Durbin said.

"Basically, we have a few compounds that we think could be very effective if taken by mouth," Durbin said.

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