Proton Beam Therapy

• Proton beam therapy (PBT) is difficult for cancer patients in India to access due to a lack of facilities and its high cost, which can reach run into tens of lakhs of rupees.
• In India, there aren't any public facilities that provide proton beam therapy treatment at the moment. For treating solid tumours, particularly head and neck cancers, the procedure is regarded as an effective substitute for radiation therapy.

What is Proton Beam Therapy?

• It is a type of radiation therapy based on protons that is used to treat cancer, particularly in the neck and head.
• Moreover, it has shown potential against various cancer types.
• Targeting specific areas and tumours has the advantage of reducing the hazardous side effects of conventional X-ray-based radiation treatments.
• PBT can accurately target the tumour while reducing radiation exposure to nearby healthy tissue, unlike conventional radiation therapy, which employs X-rays.
• PBT is often administered using a sizable, intricate device known as a cyclotron, which propels protons at high speeds to the tumour site.
• In order to reach the tumour, a proton beam transmits some radiation to healthy tissue, but very little radiation is sent past the tumor's margin.
• This means that PBT is equally as effective at treating tumours while exposing less of the surrounding healthy tissues to radiation.

How Proton Therapy Works

• Protons are accelerated by a device known as a synchrotron or cyclotron. High energy is produced by the protons' rapid speed. The protons are propelled by this energy to the precise location within the body. The targeted radiation dose is subsequently delivered to the tumour by the protons.
• Less radiation is administered outside of the tumour while using proton treatment. After x-rays depart the patient's body, they continue to deliver radiation doses during conventional radiation therapy. This indicates that radiation potentially causes negative effects by damaging surrounding healthy tissues.

Significance

• PBT is a more recent technology that is intended to further cut down on how much radiation damages nearby healthy tissue.
• In particular patient populations or when the cancer is close to a major organ, such the spinal cord, the Treatment makes it possible to precisely focus a dosage of high-energy protons to a tumour, minimising the damage to nearby healthy tissues and vital organs.
• PBT is increasingly being used to treat cancer in young patients. Compared to traditional radiotherapy, there is no greater probability of curing the disease, but there is a chance that the severity of the long-term adverse effects will be lessened, if not completely eliminated.
• PBT has mostly been used to treat malignancies in adults that are adjacent to organs that are more susceptible to the harmful effects of radiation. For instance, PBT is used to treat specific tumours that are found near the base of the skull, inside the head, close to the brain, and in the spine.

Side Effects

• The actual procedure is painless. Afterward, you can feel worn out. You could also experience skin issues like blistering, peeling, and redness.
• You can get additional side effects, particularly if you're also getting chemotherapy. The size of the tumour, the type of healthy tissue close to the tumour, and the area of the body being treated all affect the proton therapy's negative effects. Find out which side effects are most likely to affect you by asking your medical team.

Problems with PBT

• The price for installing PBT is substantially over 500 crores.
• The Department of Atomic Energy's safety concerns make opening a PBT centre challenging from an infrastructure and regulatory standpoint.
• A daily inspection is needed to make sure there are no hydrogen leaks.
• The Department of Atomic Energy has safety concerns.
• PBT for the general public has not yet been made available by any government facility.
• Most people cannot afford the lakhs of rupees in treatment charges.
• There is now only one PBT centre in South and West Asia, located at Apollo Hospital in Chennai.

Moving Ahead

• To meet the demands of the general public, particularly the needs of children, the government must find a means to have at least a few of these facilities.

It will help promote the vast, unexplored market for expensive therapies in medical tourism.

India’s First DNA Vaccine for Dengue

• The first and only Dengue Fever DNA vaccine candidate in India has been created by scientists at India's National Centre for Biological Sciences in partnership with nine other institutions in India, Africa, and the US.
• In early tests on mice, the candidate elicited a potent immune response and increased survival rates following illness exposure.

About Dengue Vaccine

• The four strains of dengue are DEN-1, DEN-2, DEN-3, and DEN-4. The most prevalent strain in India is DEN-2. Dengue vaccines are challenging to produce since they must be effective against all 4 strains.
• Only two dengue vaccinations have been given the go-ahead as of yet.
• Sanofi, a French pharmaceutical firm, produces Dengvaxia. However, it can only be used by those who have already experienced Dengue or who reside in a region where the bulk of the population has already contracted the disease. This vaccine may raise the risk of developing severe dengue in those who have never had the infection.
• Qdenga: Made by the Japanese business Takeds, it can be used by those without a history of infection.

A DNA vaccine is what?

• A DNA vaccine is a type of vaccination that stimulates an immune response using a short bit of DNA from a pathogen, such as a virus or bacterium, that codes for a particular antigen (a molecule that causes an immunological response).
• Direct injection of the DNA into the body's cells causes the cells to get instructions to create the antigen.
• After then, the immune system identifies the antigen as foreign and launches an immunological reaction against it, aiding in the development of pathogen immunity.
• Third-generation vaccines are DNA vaccines.
• The DNA-based COVID-19 vaccine ZyCoV-D is the first of its kind in the world and was developed exclusively in India.

About Dengue

• The viral disease transmitted by mosquitoes that spreads the fastest worldwide is dengue.
• The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that roughly 2.5 billion people live in dengue-endemic countries and that there are an estimated 50 million dengue illnesses per year.
• Dengue places a heavy financial, social, and health impact on those living in endemic areas.

Dengue affects people at all social strata, although the cost may be greater for the poorest who live in areas with poor solid waste management and water infrastructure, as well as where the principal vector, Aedes aegypti, can thrive.

National Youth Parliament Festival 2023

• The fourth edition of the National Youth Parliament Festival took place in New Delhi, the nation's capital. The Minister of State for Youth and Sports Affairs Shri Nisith Pramanik spoke on the opening day of the National Youth Parliament Festival (NYPF) finals at the Central Hall of Parliament, New Delhi.

About

• Idea for a Better Tomorrow: India for the World is the theme of this edition
• Participation: In 150 locations across the nation, more than 2.01 lakh young people from 748 Districts of all the States and UTs took part.

Objective

• To hear the youth's perspective is one of the most important goals.
• enhancing democracy and making it possible for the student section to comprehend how the Parliament operates.

National Youth Parliament Festival

• The concept of NYPF was presented by the prime minister in his Mann Ki Baat Speech.
• District Youth Parliaments are also held under this.
• They take place on three different levels:
• District Youth Parliaments A jury will conduct a preliminary screening to choose youngsters to participate in the DYP.
• State Youth Parliament (SYP): At the state level, SYP is comprised of young people chosen by a jury from the District Youth Parliament.
• National Youth Parliament (NYP): In NYP, which is held in New Delhi, youth who are chosen by a jury from the State Youth Parliament participate at the national level.

The first NYPF 2019 was held with the motto "Be the Voice of New India and Discover Solutions and Contribute to Policy," and 88,000 youth participated in physical mode.

NASA's Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer

• Recently, using NASA's Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer, astronomers examined a supernova explosion that took place more than 450 years ago (IXPE).
• People on Earth were able to see the Tycho explosion in 1572, and the blast's shock wave is still resonating throughout the cosmos.

Describe Tycho

• Tycho is categorised as a Type Ia supernova, which happens when a white dwarf star rips apart its partner star, causing a catastrophic explosion and shooting material into space at extremely high velocities.
• Tycho launched particles into space at speeds close to the speed of light and expended as much energy as the Sun would in ten billion years.
• In order to learn more about how particles are driven nearby Tycho's shock wave and to examine polarised X-rays from the supernova remnant, researchers employed IXPE to disclose the magnetic field geometry.

Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer: What is it?

• About: NASA and the Italian Space Agency collaborated to create the IXPE Space Observatory.
• The most extreme and enigmatic objects in the universe, including supernova remnants, supermassive black holes, and numerous other high-energy objects, are studied by it.
• Importance: It will make it easier to study polarised X-ray emissions from supermassive black holes and neutron stars.
• X-ray polarisation measurements can be used to reconstruct the origin of the light, including the geometry and internal structure of the source.

It will clarify how black holes rotate, where they were located in the past, and why pulsars flare so brightly in X-rays.