Research progress on medical protective agents for ionizing radiation damage

Nowadays, ionizing radiation has become one of the risk factors for human healthy. Exploring effective protective strategies are important topics in radiological medicine. Timely using of the radiation protection agents are the most direct and effective medical protective strategy for reducing the damage of ionizing radiation to normal tissues of the body. A large number of new radiation protective agents based on mechanisms such as scavenging of free radicals, promoting DNA damage repair, inducing hypoxia of irradiated tissues and blocking bystander effect have been developed gradually. This review summarizes a variety of radiation protective agents, and their potential molecular biological mechanisms reported in recent years, to provide theoretical reference for exploring novel medical protective agents of ionizing radiation. (authors)