Cyclic-radiation response of murine fibrosarcoma cells grown as pulmonary nodules

Abstract

The radiation age response of murine fibrosarcoma (FSa) cells grown as pulmonary nodules in C 3Hf/Kam mice was determined. FSa cells were irradiated in vivo either with 10 Gy as 14 day-old lung tumors (i.e., artificial macrometastases) prior to cell separation or with 5 Gy as single cells trapped in the lungs of recipient mice (i.e., artificial micrometastases) following cell separation and synchronization by centrifugal elutriation. Flow microfluorometry (FMF) was used to determine cell-cycle parameters and the relative synchrony of the separated populations, as well as the percent contamination of normal diploid cells in each of the tumor cell populations. Tumor populations containing up to 90% G 1-, 60% S-, and 75% G 2 + M-phase tumor cells were obtained. Cell clonogenicity, determined using a lung colony assay, ranged from 0.7 to 6% for control FSa cells from the various elutriator fractions. The radiation sensitivity of these separated cell populations varied by a factor of 6, regardless of whether the cells were irradiated as artificial micro or macro-metastases. In each experiment, tumor populations most enriched in S-phase cells exhibited the greatest radiation sensitivity. To confirm that these populations were highly enriched in S-phase cells and to demonstrate that they were more radiosensitive than FSa cells in other parts of the cell cycle, the elutriated tumor populations were exposed to either suicide labeling by high specific activity tritiated thymidine or hydroxyurea. The resultant age response curves were qualitatively similar to those obtained following irradiation and reflected the S-phase sensitivity of FSa cells to these agents.