CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

In the context of biomolecular radiationdamage, primary charged particles loose energyduring interaction with biological tissues,potentially leading to the creation of secondaryelectrons in the medium. Modeling theradiobiological damages induced by suchionizing particles crossing the living matterrequires a precise knowledge of the fullradiation history, including the energy depositedduring inelastic collisions as well as the kineticenergy transferred to secondary particleseventually emitted. Monte-Carlo methods areamong the best-suited tools to achieve that goalsince they provide an adequate description ofthe radio-induced energetic pattern at the finestscale, i.e. at the cellular or sub-cellular level.However, the reliability of such numericalmethods heavily depends on the accuracy of theinput data used in the simulations, namely, theinteraction cross sections needed for describingthe various collisional processes involved in theslowing-down of the charged particles in themedium of interest.Thus, we recently proposed a series ofquantum-mechanical models based on the first-Born approximation with correct boundaryconditions and the continuum distorted wave-eikonal initial state methodology to describe theproton-induced ionization and electroniccapture in water. Recently, both quantum-mechanical models were extended to handlemore complex molecular targets and thoroughlytested in a series of studies dedicated to thedescription of the proton-induced ionization andelectron capture on DNA components [1-3]. he current work aims at scrutinizing theappropriateness of water vapor as a surrogatefor modeling the main ionizing proton-inducedprocesses in human tissue and revealing newinsights into proton-induced energy transfers inrealistic biological medium.