Glioblastoma is the most frequent and deadliest form of brain cancer and represents a major health problem affecting many young children. The median overall survival is limited to 12 - 18 months following diagnosis despite continuous improvements in treatment. Radiation therapy plays a crucial role in glioma treatment, however, glioma cells survive the treatment, one underlying reason being the presence of cancer stem cells that have high DNA repair capacity. One promising strategy to improve treatment of this aggressive radioresistant tumor is therefore to combine radiotherapy with inhibitors of DNA repair.

DORADIOS project aims to develop new efficient strategies for glioma radiosensitization. We aim at identifying radiation-drug combinations inhibiting DNA repair and exploring how such treatment combinations work in cells irradiated with high-LET versus low-LET radiotherapy (X-ray, protons and carbon-ions). We also aim at identifying new promising biomarkers signatures that may support the development of personalized treatment of patients. These biomarkers will be generated to match glioblastoma specific molecular signature for radiosensitivity.

During the period of 27-30 September 2022, the progress meeting of DORADIOS project, a collaboration between IFIN-HH (Department of Life and Environmental Physics) and Oslo University Hospital, Cancer Research Institute, Norway (Department of Radiation Biology) financed in the frame of Romania and Norway Grants UEFISCDI program, was hosted at IFIN-HH. The project also includes two other European partners: ARIA, UMR6252 CIMAP, CEA, Caen, France and Leicester School of Pharmacy, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. The project is focused on the solution to sensitize radio-resistant tumors combining drugs that block the DNA repairing processes in the irradiated cells with X-ray and hadron based radiotherapy, as dr. Randi Syljuåsen, the Norwegian team leader, explained during her talk given in the frame of the IFIN-HH general seminar (September 29, 2022). The meeting was a good opportunity for the collaboration teams (the Romanian one lead by dr. Diana Savu, who is also the project leader, the Norwegian one, lead by dr. Randi Syljuåsen and the French one lead by dr. Francois Chevalier) to present results obtained in the project and to discuss the future activities. A visit at some infrastructures in IFIN-HH (3 MV Tandetron, TR19 Cyclotron and ELI-NP) was organized for our guests.