Clinical Cancer Research, Vol 1, Issue 8 785-790, Copyright © 1995 by American Association for Cancer Research

ARTICLES

Response of dermal fibroblast cultures from patients with unusually severe responses to radiotherapy and from ataxia telangiectasia heterozygotes to fractionated radiation

WK DahlBerg and JB Little
Laboratory of Radiobiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA.

We examined the cytotoxic effects of radiation delivered in daily fractions at clinically relevant doses in plateau phase cultures of skin fibroblast cell strains derived from ataxia telangiectasia (AT) heterozygotes, patients with unusually sensitive responses to radiotherapy, apparently normal patients, and cell bank controls. A gradual linear reduction in surviving fraction versus total dose was observed in the control group, comprised of apparently normal individuals and one patient with a normal clinical response to radiotherapy, after exposure to daily fractions of 2.0 Gy. There was a much steeper decline in surviving fraction among the AT heterozygotes and the group with sensitive responses to radiotherapy, such that after six daily fractions of 2.0 Gy (12 Gy total dose), the mean surviving fraction of the control group was significantly different from that of the AT heterozygotes (P = 0.0009) and that of the patients with unusually sensitive responses to radiotherapy (P = 0.0002). We propose that this assay may be a useful means of identifying cell strains from AT heterozygotes. Based on these results, the hypothesis is discussed that patients who suffer unusually sensitive clinical reactions to radiotherapy may be AT heterozygotes.

This article has been cited by other articles:

				A. Dritschilo Radiosensitivity and Transcription Factor NF-{kappa}B Inhibition--Progress and Pitfalls J Natl Cancer Inst, November 17, 1999; 91(22): 1910 - 1911. [Full Text] [PDF]

				W. K. Dahlberg, E. I. Azzam, Y. Yu, and J. B. Little Response of Human Tumor Cells of Varying Radiosensitivity and Radiocurability to Fractionated Irradiation Cancer Res., October 1, 1999; 59(20): 5365 - 5369. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]