Radiotherapy Induces Innate Immune Responses in Patients Treated for Prostate Cancers.

Purpose: Radiotherapy is a curative therapeutic modality used to treat cancers as a single agent or in combination with surgery and chemotherapy. Advanced radiotherapy technologies enable treatment with large fractions and highly conformal radiation doses to effect free-radical damage to cellular DNA leading to cell-cycle arrest, cell death, and innate immune response (IIR) stimulation.

Experimental Design: To understand systemic clinical responses after radiation exposure, proteomic and metabolomic analyses were performed on plasma obtained from patients with cancer at intervals after prostate stereotactic body radiotherapy.