The relationship between potentially lethal damage repair and intrinsic radiosensitivity of human cells

The intrinsic radiosensitivity of exponentially growing cells (exp) was compared to that of immediately plated plateau phase cells (ip) using published data on 60 human cell lines (27 fibroblast lines and 33 tumour cell lines). The values for alpha, D and S2 are not significantly different for the two groups; beta is significantly higher in ip cells. This produces a smaller alpha/beta ratio in ip cells than in exp cells. The influence of potentially lethal damage (PLD) repair was assessed by comparing the radiosensitivities of ip cells and plateau phase cells with delayed plating (dp). The published data for 81 human cell lines (48 fibroblasts and 33 tumour lines) were used. PLD repair was found to lead to a decrease in alpha and an increase in D and S2, whereas neither beta nor the alpha/beta ratio changed significantly. The relationship between PLD repair and intrinsic radiosensitivity was assessed by repair capacity and the repair ratio. The fitted relationship is a bell-shaped curve with a maximum at 2.2 Gy for repair capacity. The fitted curve predicts that repair capacity is zero at a D up of 0.28 Gy and at 4 Gy. Thus, PLD repair is a reasonable reflection of intrinsic radiosensitivity up to 2.2 Gy. Above 2.2 Gy, the relationship is reversed: the greater the radioresistance, the lower the PLD repair.