Abstract
Apoptosis induction and tumor cell repopulation: The yin and yang of radiotherapy
Highlights
The induction of tumor cell death is a central goal of radiotherapy
Huang and coworkers describe that induction of apoptosis by radiotherapy stimulates rapid tumor cell repopulation - a process crucially dependent on caspase 3 activity [1]
These findings are of immense relevance for the clinical use of radiotherapy, when combined with targeted agents aiming at radiosensibilization and enhanced apoptosis induction [2-8]
Summary
The induction of tumor cell death is a central goal of radiotherapy. Surprisingly, a recent study sheds new light on this process, and the results presented by Huang et al strongly question the benefit of radiation-induced apoptosis for the outcome of cancer radiotherapy. Huang and coworkers describe that induction of apoptosis by radiotherapy stimulates rapid tumor cell repopulation - a process crucially dependent on caspase 3 activity [1]. In contrast to the results presented by Huang et al, previous work has convincingly demonstrated that the increased induction of apoptotic cell death, for example by the combination of agonistic TRAIL antibodies with radiation, results in a pronounced benefit for long term tumor control in a colorectal xenograft model [9-11].
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