Prof. Janusz Rak is the winner of the international CEUS-UNISONO competition for bilateral or trilateral research projects for teams from Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Poland, and will receive over PLN 1.6 million for implementation of the project entitled "Radiosensitizing derivatives of pyrimidine or purine bases: mass spectrometry and quantum chemical methods for studying interactions with low-energy electrons in the gas phase, clusters with water and solution.
The results of the project will be applicable in radiotherapy used to destroy solid tumours, which account for about 80% of all cancers. Unfortunately, ionising radiation used to destroy cancer cells also destroys healthy tissues surrounding the tumour, which are more sensitive to this effect than the tumour itself. This may result in the development of so-called secondary tumours. To counteract such a situation, chemical substances are used to increase the sensitivity of tumours to ionising radiation, the so-called radiosensitisers, e.g. derivatives of natural nucleosides which are incorporated into cellular DNA. The main objective of the project carried out by Prof. Rak is to understand the relationship that exists between the nature of dissociative electron attachment (DEA) to modified nucleic bases/nucleosides (MNuc) in the gas phase and the mechanism of the DEA process in water, i.e. in the physiological environment where radiosensitizers will act. Elucidating the details of the DEA process, and in particular, the effect of water should allow the optimisation of the performance of the compounds under investigation, which could lead to the design of a super-sensitiser that will find application in clinical practice.
In the CEUS-UNISONO competition it is possible to receive funds for remuneration for the research team, scholarships for students or doctoral students, purchase or manufacturing of scientific and research equipment and other costs related to expenses necessary for the implementation of the research project. The competition was addressed to Polish research teams that applied for funding of a project in the field of basic research jointly with one (in the case of bilateral cooperation) or two (in the case of trilateral cooperation) selected partner research teams. The execution time of research submitted for funding is 24 or 36 months, and in the case of projects carried out with teams from Austria, it may also be 48 months.