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Advanced Topics in Gold Nanoparticles: Biomedical Applications
Published in Jay L. Nadeau, Introduction to Experimental Biophysics, 2017
Heavy elements can be potent radiosensitizers. It has been demonstrated that platinum-containing DNA-cross-linking drugs such as cisplatin can enhance the effects of ionizing radiation through the high-Z effect, or what has come to be known as Auger therapy. Heavy elements have significantly higher photoelectric cross sections than soft tissue for sub-million-electron-volt energies, approximated for x-ray energies by the equation
Cascade production of secondary electrons and photons and energy absorption mechanisms in liquid nitrogen irradiated by photons in the energy range of 0.027–17.4 keV
Published in Radiation Effects and Defects in Solids, 2023
Alexander P. Chaynikov, Andrei G. Kochur, Victor A. Yavna
It is known that secondary electrons, including Auger electrons emitted during the cascade vacancy decay, play an important role in energy absorption in the matter under ionizing radiation (2). A relatively new branch of radiotherapy, Auger therapy (3), is based on the effect of cascade-produced Auger electrons on the DNA of malignant tumor cells. This damage is induced either by a direct interaction of secondary electrons with any of the individual DNA molecular components or by an indirect interaction of the reactive species (hydroxyl and other radicals) induced by secondary electrons from the molecules surrounding DNA. Very-low-energy secondary electrons produced by cascade decays and multiple secondary inelastic events in the vicinity of an initially ionized atom may also contribute to biomolecular damage (4). One of the mechanisms of the effect of very-low-energy electrons on biomolecules is dissociative electron attachment (DEA) (5) causing DNA strand breaks.