CELLULAR-RECOVERY KINETIC STUDIES RELEVANT TO COMBINED-MODALITY RESEARCH AND THERAPY

The relevance of cellular recovery kinetics to combined-modality therapy is evaluated within the framework of an idealized experimental flow chart and published adriamycin data. Within this context, limitations for both experimental design and data interpretations are discussed. The effects of adriamycin have been documented extensively at the molecular and cellular level and its interactions with X-irradiation have been studied, both in vitro and in vivo. The limited in vivo results suggest that the end results of a given protocol correlate with cellular recovery kinetics; however, definitive experiments simply have not been done. For example, no one has used single-dose drug and irradiation data to predict the outcome and then confirm or refute the prediction even in a relatively simple 2-dose drug + 2-dose X-ray protocol. Thus, at this time, the extent of the correlations between cellular recovery kinetics and clinical response for either normal or malignant tissues are not known and the possible relevance of such studies cannot be discounted. © 1979.