Clinical application of flow cytometric analysis to predict results of radiation therapy

This includes review of recent papers about clinical application of flow cytometry referred to sensitivity and effectiveness of radiation therapy and also our study to develop the new method to detect the DNA damage by irradiation. In view point of nucleoid damage with radiation therapy, FCM showed usefulness in using forward scatter histogram. The nucleoid induced to measure DNA damage here was originally developed by Cook et al, and thereafter, by Milner who first applied FCM to detect the damage. The nucleoids from HeLa cell and U 138 cell line were prepared following their methods. Control nucleoids showed a dose-dependent reduction in the ethidium bromide fluorescence. On the other hand, nucleoids obtained after irradiation showed a restricted reduction of it. The nadir of the fluorescence reduction seems to be a dose-dependent in radiation dose. This results indicate that FCM would be a useful tool for a rapid analysis of nuclear damage in near future. Other indicators, such as DNA index, DNA histogram, were discussed from the recent papers.