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Low-dose radiation hyper-radiosensitivity in multicellular tumour spheroids
1Radiophysics Service, University Hospital San Cecilio, Granada, Spain.
Objective:
We propose and study a new model aimed at describing the low-dose hyper-radiosensitivity phenomenon appearing in the survival curves of different cell lines.
Methods:
The model uses the induced repair assumption, considering that the critical dose at which this mechanism begins to act varies from cell to cell in a given population. The model proposed is compared with the linear-quadratic model and the modified linear-quadratic model, which is commonly used in literature and in which the induced repair is taken into account in a heuristic way. The survival curve for the MCF-7 line of human breast cancer is measured at low absorbed doses and the uncertainties in these doses are estimated using thermoluminiscent dosemeters.
Results:
It is shown that these multicellular spheroids present low-dose hyper-radiosensitivity. The new model permits an accurate description of the data of two human cell lines (previously published) and of the multicellular spheroids of the MCF-7 line here measured.
Conclusion:
The model shows enough flexibility to account for data with very different characteristics and considers in a faithful way the hypothesis of the repair induction.
