This special issue of the International Journal of Radiation Biology entitled Translational Approaches for Radiation Risk Assessment was inspired by two special technical sessions arranged by the Department of Energy (DOE) which aimed to cross pollinate advances in radiation biology, physics, epidemiology and modeling. The first of these sessions entitled Translational Approaches to Improve Health Effects Knowledge in Support of Radiation Protection Guidance was held at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the Health Physics Society. A special technical session entitled Translating Low Dose Mechanistic Radiobiology into Practical Tools for Decision-Makers was held in conjunction with the 2019 Annual Radiation Research Society Meeting in San Diego. The goal of these sessions was to increase awareness of ongoing translational approaches used by the national and international communities to integrate mechanistic data with epidemiology and modeling to provide actionable knowledge for radiation protection and research needs.
Both sessions included presentations from national and international speakers, followed by extended group discussions. Speakers provided talks on low dose radiobiology along with illustrations of the application and utility of approaches such as the Adverse Outcome Pathway (AOP) analysis and Biologically-Based Dose Response models, and of how these approaches can integrate both experimental and epidemiological data to better inform health risk assessment. Presentations also highlighted how these approaches are being applied, where these efforts are heading in the future, where gaps and limitations exist, and what activities are needed to bring translational research forward. We wish to thank all speakers for their excellent presentations that resulted in two highly successful sessions.
Following these sessions, a selection of speakers and researchers active in these areas were invited to contribute to this special edition of IJRB to further disseminate the progresses made in translational radiation research and encourage further interdisciplinary collaborations and translation research in the future. We thank all of the authors who have contributed to this special edition and hope that the research community finds these contributions stimulating.
The views of the authors in the following papers do not necessarily reflect those of DOE, FDA, or the U.S. government in regarding the AOP concept and its application to the radiation field.