Reducing the cancer risk of 239Pu by chelation therapy

Groups of adult female C57BL/Do mice were injected intraperitoneally with graded activities of monomeric 239Pu(IV) citrate at 10 weeks of age. Beginning 3 days after plutonium injection, some mice received repeated subcutaneous injections of Zn Na3 diethylenetriaminepentaacetate (Zn-DTPA). Each injection was 37 mumol Zn-DTPA/kg body weight. To evaluate protection from bone sarcoma, brief, intermediate, or protracted chelation therapies were administered to groups of mice. The brief chelation therapy covered a 2-week period, the intermediate therapy 2 months, and the protracted therapy 1 year. The mice were followed throughout life and examined for bone sarcoma. Both skeletal dose and bone sarcoma risk were reduced by chelation. The bone sarcoma incidences in the mice given chelation treatments generally fell below the dose-response curve for the mice not given DTPA, indicating that the cancer risk was reduced more than that corresponding to the decreased skeletal dose. This results suggests that Zn-DTPA preferentially removed Pu from the most carcinogenic locations in the skeleton, such as on bone surfaces near living cells.