The DoD’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is commissioning a nine-month study by Rice University chemists and investigators at the Texas Medical Center to “determine whether a new drug based on carbon nanotubes can help prevent people from dying of acute radiation injury following radiation exposure.”
The drug, based on carbon nanotubes and two common food preservatives, has already shown huge promise in reducing the effects of radiation exposure:
The new study was commissioned after preliminary tests found the drug was greater than 5,000 times more effective at reducing the effects of acute radiation injury than the most effective drugs currently available…
NTH is made at Rice’s Chemistry Department and Carbon Nanotechnology Laboratory in the Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology. The drug is based on single-walled carbon nanotubes, hollow cylinders of pure carbon that are about as wide as a strand of DNA. To form NTH, Rice scientists coat nanotubes with two common food preservatives — the antioxidant compounds butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) and butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) — and derivatives of those compounds.
“The same properties that make BHA and BHT good food preservatives, namely their ability to scavenge free radicals, also make them good candidates for mitigating the biological affects that are induced through the initial ionizing radiation event,” Tour said.
In preliminary tests at M.D. Anderson in July 2007, mice showed enhanced protection when exposed to lethal doses of ionizing radiation when they were given first-generation NTH drugs prior to exposure.
“Our preliminary results are remarkable, and that’s why DARPA awarded us this grant with a very compressed timeline for delivery: nine months, which is almost unheard of for an academic study of this type,” Tour said. “They are very interested in finding out whether this will work in a post-exposure delivery, and they don’t want to waste any time.”