Antioxidant Nanomedicine Significantly Enhances the Survival Benefit of Radiation Cancer Therapy by Mitigating Oxidative Stress-Induced Side Effects.

Oxidative stress-induced off-target effects limit the therapeutic window of radiation therapy. Although many antioxidants have been evaluated as radioprotective agents, none of them are in widespread clinical use, owing to the side effects of the antioxidants themselves and the lack of apparent benefit. Aiming for a truly effective radioprotective agent in radiation cancer therapy, the performance of a self-assembling antioxidant nanoparticle (herein denoted as redox nanoparticle; RNP) is evaluated in the local irradiation of a subcutaneous tumor-bearing mouse model.