Determine the yield of micronucleated cells in primary human fibroblasts exposed to focused soft X-rays.
This project was a small part of a larger collaborative study headed by Dr Aloke Chatterjee, (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) and including Drs Les Braby, John Ford (Texas A&M) and Kathy Held (MGH Boston), which was developing an integrated theoretical and experimental model of the radiation-induced bystander response. Our part of the study has been to determine the effectiveness of soft X-rays at inducing chromosomal damage under conditions of direct and bystander exposure. The aim was to compare this with the effectiveness of the low energy 60 kV electron microbeam available at Texas A&M. Previous studies have been performed with primary human fibroblasts measuring micronuclei formation to determine the relative yields of direct versus bystander mediated micronuclei formation after cells were individually irradiated utilizing our novel focused soft X-ray microprobe, which is capable of producing localized submicron beams of carbon-K (278 eV) X-rays. Only a brief overview is given here as the study has been published in several papers. Our original hypothesis was to study yields of bystander-induced micronucleated cells in both wild-type and mutant fibroblast from mouse embryo fibroblasts. Difficulties with the level of background micronuclei in the MEFs prevented systematic studies of bystander responses in the laboratories involved in the collaboration. We then performed these studies with AG1522 primary human fibroblast cells using a siRNA approach developed by John Ford at Texas A&M to knock down DNA PKcs in the first instance. Our soft X-ray source has been in routine use for carbon-K X-rays and is now available with Aluminium-K (1.49 keV) and titanium-K (4.5 keV), although the dose-rate from titanium is still too low at present for most experiments, where large numbers of cells need to be exposed. A separately funded project developed a new soft X-ray microprobe which will give much greater flexibility for changing energies and giving high dose-rates for exposures (See DE-FG02-01ER63236). However, we performed pilot studies measuring bystander responses with titanium-K. To date we have performed studies with V79 cells measuring cell survival as an endpoint and are starting studies in our human fibroblasts to measure micronuclei yields. A significant bystander response is observed in the V79 cells under conditions where only a single cell within a population was irradiated either with carbon-K or titanium-K X-rays. Typically around 10% cell killing is observed under these conditions. These studies are now being extended to measure micronuclei yields in the AG1522 cells under direct and bystander conditions. Our work has suggested that the yield of micronuclei in fibroblasts exposed to soft X-rays may be reduced in comparison to conventional X-ray exposures (Prise et al., 2003). Although further studies are required to confirm this using a range of scoring times.
- Research Organization:
- Gray Cancer Institute
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC)
- DOE Contract Number:
- FG02-02ER63305
- OSTI ID:
- 896796
- Report Number(s):
- DOE/ER/63305-1; TRN: US200717%%462
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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