Radiation-induced malignancies after intensity-modulated versus conventional mediastinal radiotherapy in a small animal model.

A long-standing hypothesis in radiotherapy is that intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) increases the risk of second cancer due to low-dose exposure of large volumes of normal tissue. Therefore, young patients are still treated with conventional techniques rather than with modern IMRT. We challenged this hypothesis in first-of-its-kind experiments using an animal model.

Glycolytic metabolism and tumour response to fractionated irradiation.

Background And Purpose: To study whether pre-therapeutic lactate or pyruvate predict for tumour response to fractionated irradiation and to identify possible coherencies between intermediates of glycolysis and expression levels of selected proteins.

Materials And Methods: Concentrations of lactate, pyruvate, glucose and ATP were quantified via bioluminescence imaging in tumour xenografts derived from 10 human head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) lines. Tumours were irradiated with 30 fractions within 6 weeks.