SOLEIL, the new French synchrotron radiation facility, will provide the scientific community with one of the most advanced (brilliant, variably polarized and highly monochromatic) tunable light sources ranging from the infrared to the hard X-rays. The MELUSYN* workshops, created jointly through a collaborative work between SOLEIL and ECRIN are gathering together actors from the academic research, applied and medical research as well as private companies and clinicians, to take advantage of the high quality scientific and technological environment developed around SOLEIL.
One of the main transverse topics which are developed across MELUSYN is spatio-temporal Radiobiology involving radiation in the UV, VUV, soft and hard X-ray range. This represents an interdisciplinary field of study driven nowadays in strong synergy with the recent progress of complex medical imaging techniques or ionizing radiation therapies and namely cancer therapy. Using the unique properties of synchrotron radiation, as well as the wide panel of investigation techniques like spectroscopy and imaging, eventually operated in time resolved mode or with nanometric beams, SOLEIL is expected to provide new insight into yet unknown aspects of radiobiology.
The scope of the two day workshop is bringing together physicists, chemists, biochemists, biologists, genetics experts as well as physicians with a common interest in using synchrotron radiation and related techniques to explore various aspects of modern radiobiology and radiation therapy. Deeply understanding the basic mechanisms of radiation damage in vitro and on living cells, starting from the early radical and molecular processes to mutagenic DNA lesions, cell signalling, genomic instability, apoptosis, radio sensitivity, Bystander effect etc. should have in the near future many practical consequences like the customization of radiation therapy or radioprotection protocols for instance.
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