Abstract: With the rapid development of the nuclear industry widespread application of nuclear technology, the opportunity of person exposure to ionizing radiation is increasing. So much focus on radioprotector and radiation treatment agents. However, no ideal radioprotector and radiation treatment agents are available at present. Researchers attempted to find some effective approaches to protect and treat humans against such effects of ionizing radiation. This review mainly dwell on the radioprotective potential of chemicals, plant and herbs as well as cytokine, stem cell and their application prospects in radiation protection. Several chemical compounds and their analogues have been screened for their radioprotective ability, however, their high toxicity at optimum protective doses precluds their clinical use. The plant and natural products are usually less toxic, relatively cheap, can be orally administered and can act through multiple mechanisms due to the presence of many activated chemicals. Cytokine therapy is the main strategy capable of preventing or reducing the acute radiation syndrome (ARS), however, use of cytokines should be restricted, because ARS is a global illness that requires treatment of damages to all damage tissues. MSC is a promising approach developed in the laboratory, which is of great therapeutic potential due to their capacity, including secretion of hematopoietic cytokine, reconstruction hemopoietic microenvironment, poor-immunogenicity, ease of reception ectogenic gene transfection and expression. Concerted application of plant and herbs as radioprotectors and MSC as radiation treatment agents may be a promising approach in the future.