Radiobiological effectiveness of iodouracil and the influence of atomic giant resonance

Abstract

Hadron therapy combined with nanotechnology has been proposed as an elegant alternative for cancer treatment. Internal amplification of electron emission causing radiobiological effectiveness in nanoinserted biomolecules is of prime importance and has been measured here for the iodouracil molecule. Our experiment involves the measurement of angle and energy resolved double differential cross section (DDCS) of electron emission from iodouraciil and uracil (and also water) in collisions with fast C6+ ions. The electron emission from iodouracil is substantially enhanced over that from uracil or water. The enhancement is much larger than the state-of-the-art model for Coulomb ionization based on the continuum distorted wave-eikonal initial state (CDW-EIS) approximation. The electron sensitizing factor (˜2.4) is in excellent agreement with the strand-breaking sensitizing factor (˜2.0) for metal nanoparticle embedded in a DNA. The enhancement is explained in terms of collective excitation of strongly correlated 4d electrons, known as atomic giant dipole resonance (GDR) in I atoms. The GDR contribution to the enhancement is derived, which is in excellent agreement with recent theoretical prediction, thereby providing conclusive experimental evidence of the crucial role of collective excitation in radio sensitization.