Investigation of individual radiosensitivity of prostate cancer patients under radiation treatment

Radiotherapy plays a central role in the treatment of patients with prostate cancer. One of the main challenges inmodern radiation oncology is to develop efficient predictive models for the estimation of the radiation toxicity riskto tailor radiation treatment to the ndividual patient, improve the therapeutic success, and minimize severe adverseeffects in cancer survivors. Numerous treatment-related, patient-specific, clinical, and biological factors, includinggenetic and epigenetic factors, as well as mediators of inflammation and immune response, may affect the possiblerisk of developing acute and late genitourinary and gastrointestinal radiation toxicity in prostate cancer patientsundergoing radiotherapy. The multifactorial biological background of each cancer patient is responsible for individualdifferences in radiation-induced normal tissue toxicity. The investigation of the sensitivity of patient-derived peripheralblood mononuclear cells (PBMC) to ionizing radiation using different cell-based functional assays in combinationwith molecular mechanisms underlying this signature and specific acute and late radiation toxicity adverse eventsin prostate cancer patients using genomic, transcriptomic, epigenomic, and proteomic profiling is essential foridentification of novel biomarkers and models for individual radiosensitivity assessment. The radiobiology researchconducted within the Horizon Europe Twinning project RadExIORSBoost at the Institute for Oncology and Radiology ofSerbia (coordinator) in collaboration with top-class leading European research institutions...