Sparing effects of FLASH irradiation in patient-derived lung tissue

This study aims to assess the effect of conventional radiotherapy compared to FLASH radiotherapy on healthy human lung tissue. FLASH radiotherapy, characterized by ultra-high dose rates, is hypothesized to spare healthy tissue from radiation-induced damage while maintaining efficacy against tumors. To achieve this goal and better characterize this sparing effect, bulk RNA sequencing analysis was conducted on 3 patients to study the molecular and cellular responses of lung tissue to both types of radiotherapy. The main objectives are to evaluate if FLASH radiotherapy effectively spares healthy lung tissue from radiation-induced damage and to understand the underlying molecular mechanisms behind this potential protective effect. Overall design: Lung samples from lobectomies (n = 3) were irradiated either with FLASH radiotherapy (FLASH), conventional radiotherapy (CONV) at a dose of 9 Gy or untreated (NI). After 24-hours at 37°C in culture medium, total RNAs were extracted using RNAeasy Mini Kit from Qiagen. Libraries were prepared and sequenced on an Illumina NovaSeq 6000 sequencer. Three biological replicates were performed per condition and per patient.