A drug currently under development by the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine may help bone fractures heal more quickly after radiation exposure, according to a study by Pitt researchers. The study's results were presented during the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) annual meeting in Chicago.

The drug, JP4-039, is a free-radical scavenger targeted to the mitochondria, the energy generator of all cells. For this study, researchers compared the healing time of fractures in a mouse model system treated immediately after radiation exposure with JP4-039 against a control group of mice that did not receive the drug. The fractured bones in the group treated with JP4-039 healed much more rapidly than the control group…