Cell survival after Auger electron emission from stable intracellular indium exposed to monochromatic synchrotron...

The biological effect of Auger electrons emitted from indium in V79 cells was investigated. K-shell vacancies were induced by synchrotron x-rays. Two energies, 100 eV above and below the K-edge of indium, were used. The cell survival for controls was similar to that which has been reported by others, with D37 = 4.4 Gy. Indium-oxine-labelled cells exhibited a survival clearly below that of the controls, D37 = 3.2 Gy, but no significant difference in survival between irradiations above and below the K-edge could be observed. The explanation is, inter alia, that the number of photons interacting with indium atoms incorporated into the cell, is small compared with the number of photons interacting with other atoms in the cell. The toxicity of indium oxine made it impossible to incorporate a sufficient number of indium atoms into the cells to observe a difference in this study. However, monoenergetic irradiation above and below the K-edge, provides a technique for the investigation of basic biological effects of Auger processes.