Scientists have discovered a new drug, which can protect healthy cells and bone marrow against anti-cancer radiation therapy or against a nuclear incident or an atomic bomb, a study released Friday showed.

Radiotherapy is an important treatment in the fight against cancer, but, unfortunately has devastating side-affects, killing healthy cells in the bone marrow, gut and spleen. The radiation causes apoptosis, a process in which the DNA of healthy cells is killed. This further prompts healthy cells to kill themselves.

Known as CBLB502, and so far tested in animals (mice and monkeys), the drug protected animals’ bone marrow and cells in the gut from being destroyed without interfering with radiation therapy’s ability to fight cancer.

“These tissues fail because these cells choose to commit suicide. Our idea was to block these suicidal intentions,” said Andrei Gudkov of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York, and also chief scientific officer at Cleveland BioLabs Inc whose study was published in the journal Science, Reuters reports.

CBLB502 protects radiation-blasted tissues by shutting down this cell death program, which the body normally turns on in cells with damaged DNA to keep them from multiplying, said Dr. Lyudmila Burdelya of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Bufallo who also worked on the study with Dr. Gudkov and Dr. Vadim Krivokrysenko of the same institute.

Together, they showed how a single injection of the drug given to animals shortly before receiving radiation therapy significantly reduced radiation damage to bone marrow and gut cells and prolonged the animals’ survival.

“In summary, CBLB502 reduces radiation toxicity without diminishing the therapeutic anti-tumour effect of radiation and without promoting radiation-induced carcinogenicity. We consider this paper a breakthrough for the study of radioprotection, since it provides a long awaited example of single agent anti-radiation therapy with significant survival benefits at a single dose,” Dr. Gudkov said, adding that the company is seeking US regulatory approval to start testing the drug in healthy adults, which could begin as early as this summer.

The breakthrough discovery was highly appreciated by oncologists. Dr. David Kirsch, a Duke University radiation oncologist who wasn’t involved in the study said the research “has important implications for radiation exposure.”

Also, Dr. Michael Fonstein, President and Chief Executive Officer of Cleveland BioLabs was delighted about the results of the research.

“We are very excited by these results. The prospect of increasing patients' tolerance to chemotherapeutic drugs and optimizing treatment regiments would be a significant paradigm shift in cancer treatment."

Dr Richard Kolesnick, of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, said the research represented "a breakthrough in an issue that has challenged the scientific community."