Research progress of the mechanism of Flash effect / 中华放射医学与防护杂志

ABSTRACT

The ultra-high dose rate (UHDR) radiation has less side effect while keep comparable tumor control effect with conventional dose rate (CONV) radiation, which was named Flash effect. Recently, the Flash effect has been reported in many animal experiments with various types of radiations, animal species and body parts. However, the underlying mechanism of Flash has still been unraveled, making difficulties for the clinical application. This review pointed out the differences between the Flash effect and the UHDR effect in vitro and proposed three key scientific questions of Flash effect based on three well-known hypotheses, i. e., oxygen depletion, peroxyl radical recombination and immune cell protection. Finally, the research progresses and challenges of Flash mechanism study are concluded in order to give a clue for further deep investigation.