The law of Bergonié and Tribondeau: a nice formula for a first approximation

Abstract

Purpose: By extending to other animal models the experiments on irradiated rabbit testes performed by the German Albers-Schönberg and Frieben and inspired by the preliminary observations of Regaud on spermatogenesis after irradiation, Bergonié and Tribondeau established a link between radiosensitivity and proliferation as a 'law' in 1906. Although it is still popular and taken as one of the founding laws of radiation oncology, it was early considered as a 'first approximation'.

Conclusions: More than 100 years later, one tribute paid to these pioneers should be to at least avoid mixing notions like radiosensitivity, proliferation, differentiation, stem cells that they deeply contributed to define and to re-read their works in their original version in order to better understand what the technological and conceptual advances really are today.