The Use of Synchrotron Radiation in the Medical Sciences

Synchrotron radiation (SR) sources provide unparalleled brilliance, collimation, coherence, and tunability, enabling specialized techniques that are crucial for advancing medical research across diverse fields from radiation oncology to rational drug design. Certain SR methods, such as macromolecular crystallography, are highly developed and automated, and have been used for decades for both fundamental understanding of biomolecules as well as pharmaceutical design, while other methods, such as microbeam radiation therapy, represent relatively recent developments. Scattering and diffraction methods using SR can provide atomic-level structural mapping of proteins, nucleic acids, and complexes. Imaging applications using SR continue to be developed and advanced for mapping of biological structures and potential use as diagnostics in disease detection. Spectroscopic methods are used to study elemental distributions relevant for detection of contamination in biological systems. Collectively, SR research delivers detailed multiscale structural and molecular information essential for addressing complex biomedical challenges. In this mini-review, we cover SR methods that are specifically relevant to medical applications, focusing mainly on SR X-ray and SR infrared techniques and applications. We include diffraction and scattering, imaging, absorption and fluorescent spectroscopy, use of SR in oncology treatments, and radiation damage methods that integrate one or another aspect of an SR method in conjunction with other non-SR techniques.