Flow cytometric and autoradiographic studies of human kidney carcinomas surgically removed after preirradiation

In a randomized study of human renal adenocarcinomas the tumours were either preirradiated with 25 Gy of 42 MeV X-rays or removed without pretreatment. Nephrectomy was performed 3 1/2 weeks after the end of irradiation or in the untreated series immediately after diagnosis. The impairment of cell proliferation after irradiation was determined by flow cytometry (FCM) and 3H-autoradiography after in vitro incubation. From FCM DNA distributions the fractions of cells in the phases of cell cycle were computed. The results show good agreement between the S-phase fractions determined by FCM and autoradiography. Preliminary data from 14 patients, 5 preirradiated and 9 unirradiated show that the fraction of cells in S-phase was reduced from 0.06 +/- 0.03 in the unirradiated patients to 0.01 +/- 0.01 in the irradiated ones. 12 of the 14 adenocarcinomas had diploid DNA content (2C) and 2 were hyperdiploid. The results demonstrate that FCM can supplement the techniques available for the assessment of radiation response of human tumours.