Effects of reoxygenation on repair of potentially lethal radiation damage in cultured MG-63 osteosarcoma cells.

The effects of reoxygenation on repair of potentially lethal radiation damage were investigated using MG-63 human osteosarcoma cells in vitro. When exponentially growing MG-63 cells were cultured under hypoxic conditions for 24 h, cells stopped growing and remained at a low density. The hypoxic cells were then reoxygenated by exposure to air and irradiated with a single dose of 3 Gy X rays. The fraction of the reoxygenated cells surviving after 3 Gy increased by a factor of 20.6 when the colony assay was delayed for 24 h. In control cells which were cultured under aerobic conditions before receiving a single dose of 3 Gy, the surviving fraction increased by a factor of 2.5 when the assay was delayed for 24 h. The difference in the magnitude of the repair observed between reoxygenated and aerobic cells was less prominent in confluent cells plated at high density. The enhanced repair after reoxygenation was due mainly to a decrease in the alpha coefficient when the dose-survival curve was fitted to the linear-quadratic model, whereas the most significant change in the fit of the dose-survival curve for the aerobic cells was a decrease in the beta coefficient. The control aerobic cells accumulated at G2/M phase after irradiation, whereas the reoxygenated cells did not show such an accumulation. When the hypoxic cells were irradiated and then reoxygenated, repair of these cells irradiated under hypoxic conditions was also enhanced. This is the first report to show that reoxygenation could increase cell survival after tumor irradiation.