Comparison of protons, carbon and fullerene impacts on a carbon cylinder

NUCLEAR INSTRUMENTS & METHODS IN PHYSICS RESEARCH SECTION B-BEAM INTERACTIONS WITH MATERIALS AND ATOMS

卷:202

Article; Proceedings Paper

Webb, RP ; Wilson, IH

关键词: ion beams;    molecular dynamics simulation;    carbon;    DNA;    fullerene;   

DOI  :  10.1016/S0168-583X(02)01860-8

来源: Elsevier

【 摘 要 】

The use of protons in radiation treatment has been much studied and is widely used in the treatment of cancer cells. The proton causes damage to the strands of DNA in the cells largely by interaction with the electronic system. The proton interactions largely result in bond breakage in the DNA molecules. Sometimes the resulting damage to the DNA molecule is insufficient to cause both strands of the molecule to be broken and consequently the cell can reproduce despite being irradiated. Heavy ion therapy using carbon ions has been used to try and introduce more damage into the molecule structure, ensuring that both strands of the DNA are broken and hence preventing the cell from replicating. However, it seems that even the use of ions as heavy as carbon still result in DNA that is not fully damaged. The simulations reported here form a preliminary investigation on the possible use of a molecular species to deliver multiple impacting particles to the molecular structure thereby increasing the energy density of the impacts and thereby concentrating the damaging process to ensure the DNA molecule will be completely broken. The DNA molecule itself is a very difficult molecule to simulate in a full many body molecular dynamics simulation environment and in this conceptual study we approximate the DNA molecule by a set of carbon discs and investigate the difference between the impacts of protons, carbon atoms and fullerene molecules on an elongated strong of carbon discs. The cylinder used has a similar atom density and radius to DNA and the equilibrium disc separation is very similar to the separation distance of the individual nucleotides found in DNA, consequently this much simpler system might be considered to be a reasonable starting point for a thought experiment to see if there are any potential advantages in using molecular or cluster species in this form of treatment. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

【 授权许可】

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