Researcher Honored For Work On The Biological Effects Of Radiation
Wednesday, April 23, 1997
FORT COLLINS--A Colorado State University professor
recognized for his groundbreaking research on the biological
effects of radiation will be honored by the German town where the
discoverer of X-rays was born.
University Distinguished Professor Mortimer M. Elkind will
receive the Roentgen-Plakette Award April 26 in a ceremony at the
German Roentgen Museum in Remscheid-Lennep, the birthplace of
physicist Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen.
Elkind is the sixth American scientist to receive the
Roentgen-Plakette award over its 46-year history and joins an
impressive list of recipients, including several winners of the
Nobel Prize.
"It'd be hard to think of medical science today without
Roentgen's discovery of X-rays," Elkind said. "It is an honor to
be part of such an elite group of scientists who have received
this award and to have the opportunity to visit the German town
where such a great scientist was born."
Roentgen discovered X-rays in 1895, for which he received
the first Nobel Prize for physics in 1901. During an experiment,
Roentgen noticed that barium platinocyanide crystals gave off a
florescent glow--even when shielded by black cardboard or thin
metal sheets--and correctly theorized that it could only have
been caused by some very short waves of radiation. Roentgen, who
coined the term X-ray, later applied his finding to medical uses.
Elkind, a professor in the department of radiological health
sciences, has made several key scientific contributions in
radiation therapy of cancer. One of the researcher's most noted
studies showed that surviving cells repair themselves after
exposure to radiation, a finding that led to a better
understanding of how to adjust radiation exposures for maximum
effect on tumors with minimum harm to normal tissue.
Elkind's research helped establish the scientific basis for
current radiation therapy, which is administered to about one-
third of all cancer patients worldwide. His contribution was so
significant that the process by which cells repair radiation
damage is commonly known as Elkind repair.
Today, Elkind is looking deeper into the area of how cells
repair after exposure to radiation. His studies in radiation-
induced breast cancer suggest that unlike other tissues in the
body, breast cells in susceptible women do not fully repair
themselves--even when there are long periods between radiation
exposures.
Elkind suggests that breast cancer is one of the leading
causes of death in women today, possibly because of diagnostic
radiation exposures administered up to 40 years ago. For
example, women exposed to high doses of radiation by the bombs
dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki experienced a high incidence of
breast cancer years later. Other studies showed that women who
were exposed to radiation as infants in the treatment of enlarged
thymus suffered, nearly 40 years later, a higher number of breast
cancers compared to their unexposed sisters. Radiation exposures
used in mammography decades ago could have been 10 to 20 times
higher than they are today, a possible link to a nationwide
increase in breast cancer.
"Valuable molecular work has led to the discovery of breast
cancer genes which may be inherited in mutated form. But these
genes account for only 10 percent of all breast cancers," Elkind
said. "My theory is that some external event is required to
trigger these genes and radiation can certainly make mutations."
Elkind will discuss his theory at a lecture in Remscheid-Lennep.
Over the past 30 years, Elkind has received many
distinguished national and international awards. These include
the E.O. Lawrence Award from the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in
1967 and the Charles F. Kettering Prize from the General Motors
Cancer Research Foundation in 1989. In 1986, Elkind was
designated a University Distinguished Professor, a rank held by
only 12 faculty at Colorado State. Elkind currently sits on the
board of directors of the National Coalition for Cancer Research.
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