In vitro interaction of high-LET heavy-ion irradiation and chemotherapeutic agents in two cell lines with different radiosensitivities and different p53 status

Abstract

Background: To investigate the differences between two rat yolk sac tumor cell lines with different radiosensitivities and p53 status in sensitivity to high-LET heavy-ion beam and in sensitizing effect of etoposide or cisplatin in combination with heavy-ion beam.

Materials and methods: NMT-1 (wild-type p53 cell) is a parent radiosensitive cell line and NMT-1R (mutant-type p53 cell) is a variant radioresistant cell line. Heavy ion (carbon ion) was accelerated to 290 MeV per nucleon by a heavy-ion medical accelerator in Chiba at National Institute of Radiological Sciences. The effects of carbon ion irradiation and carbon ion irradiation plus chemotherapeutic agents were assessed by clonogenic assay.

Results: There was no significant difference between NMT-1 cells and NMT-1R cells in sensitivity to high-LET heavy-ion irradiation. The RBE of carbon beam was larger in mutant-type p53 cells than in wild-type p53 cells. Etoposide showed a supra-additive effect in combination with carbon beam irradiation in NMT-1R cells. Etoposide potentiation in NMT-1R cells was manifested by the decrease in the slope of the radiation dose-response curve. On the other hand, cisplatin had no enhancement of radiosensitivity in either cell lines.

Conclusion: Our findings suggested that high-LET radiotherapy is expected to be effective for patients carrying radioresistant tumors and mutated p53 tumor cells. Etoposide might be effective for radioresistant tumors in combination with heavy-ion beam irradiation.