Two Chernobyl Doctors were the First Humans to Get GM-CSF By Robert Peter Gale By 1986, there were substantial data in animals that molecularly-clone human haematopoietic growth factors, such as granulocyte-macrophage colony stimulating factor (GM-CSF), could accelerate bone marrow recovery and increase survival after exposure to high-dose ionizing radiations given under controlled experimental conditions. On April 26, 1986, my Soviet colleagues and I were suddenly faced with treating about 200 firefighters, emergency personnel and technicians exposed to very high doses of ionizing radiations from an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power facility in Ukraine. The most severely affected persons receiving >2 Gray (Gy; for reference the average dose of the A-bomb survivors was 10 times less and there were no survivors of doses >1 Gy) were flown to Moscow where we set up operations at Clinical Hospital 6, a high security facility attached to the Institute of Biophysics. |