Grabham Peter, Sharma Preety
Center for Radiological research, Columbia University, VC 11-243, 630 West 168th street, New York, NY 10032, USA.
Vasc Cell. 2013 Oct 26;5(1):19. doi: 10.1186/2045-824X-5-19.
The average human body contains tens of thousands of miles of vessels that permeate every tissue down to the microscopic level. This makes the human vasculature a prime target for an agent like radiation that originates from a source and passes through the body. Exposure to radiation released during nuclear accidents and explosions, or during cancer radiotherapy, is well known to cause vascular pathologies because of the ionizing effects of electromagnetic radiations (photons) such as gamma rays. There is however, another type of less well-known radiation - charged ion particles, and these atoms stripped of electrons, have different physical properties to the photons of electromagnetic radiation. They are either found in space or created on earth by particle collider facilities, and are of significant recent interest due to their enhanced effectiveness and increasing use in cancer radiotherapy, as well as a health risk to the growing number of people spending time in the space environment. Although there is to date, relatively few studies on the effects of charged particles on the vascular system, a very different picture of the biological effects of these particles compared to photons is beginning to emerge. These under researched biological effects of ion particles have a large impact on the health consequences of exposure. In this short review, we will discuss the effects of charged particles on an important biological process of the vascular system, angiogenesis, which creates and maintains the vasculature and is highly important in tumor vasculogenesis.
人体平均含有数万英里长的血管，这些血管渗透到每一个组织，直至微观层面。这使得人体血管系统成为像辐射这样从一个源发出并穿过身体的物质的主要目标。众所周知，接触核事故和爆炸期间或癌症放射治疗期间释放的辐射会导致血管病变，这是因为伽马射线等电磁辐射（光子）的电离作用。然而，还有另一种不太为人所知的辐射——带电离子粒子，这些失去电子的原子具有与电磁辐射光子不同的物理特性。它们要么存在于太空中，要么由粒子对撞机设施在地球上产生，由于其在癌症放射治疗中的有效性提高和使用增加，以及对越来越多在太空环境中停留的人的健康风险，最近受到了极大关注。尽管迄今为止，关于带电粒子对血管系统影响的研究相对较少，但与光子相比，这些粒子的生物学效应正开始呈现出截然不同的景象。这些对离子粒子生物学效应研究不足的情况对暴露的健康后果有很大影响。在这篇简短的综述中，我们将讨论带电粒子对血管系统一个重要生物学过程——血管生成的影响，血管生成创建并维持血管系统，在肿瘤血管生成中非常重要。
