A SAS macro for the analysis of cell survival curves

This paper describes a SAS macro for the statistical analyses of cell survival data obtained after radiation treatment using the methods of R.E. Tarone et al. (Mutation Research 111 (1983) 79-96). These analyses are usually required on a routine basis by all biomedical research laboratories involved in cell survival assays generating dose-response curves aimed at characterizing radiosensitive mutant cell strains or individuals whose body cells exhibit enhanced sensitivity to radiation and other genotoxic agents. Statistical methods of linear regression are applied to data from repeated experiments with a cell line/strain and weighted estimates of a common slope and its variance are obtained. The methods are currently implemented in two APL programs. These programs are not easily accessible to most biomedical statisticians and researchers because APL is not a common software tool for statistical analysis. Implementation of these methods in SAS, a widely used commercial software for statistical analysis, is expected to help resolve this issue. We illustrate the application of the macro using an example data set obtained in our laboratory, and hope that other investigators may find it useful in analyzing their data.