A Branching process model for the analysis of abortive colony size distributions in carbon ion-irradiated normal human fibroblasts

Sakashita, Tetsuya; Hamada, Nobuyuki*; Kawaguchi, Isao*; Hara, Takamitsu*; Kobayashi, Yasuhiko; Saito, Kimiaki  

Our previous analysis with a branching process model showed that the relative cell death (RCD) in human fibroblasts can persist over 16 generations following irradiation with low linear energy transfer (LET) -rays. Here we further set out to evaluate the RCD persistency in abortive colonies arising from normal human fibroblasts exposed to high-LET carbon ions (18.3 MeV/u, 108 keV/m). We found that the abortive colony size distribution determined by biological experiments follows the linear relationship on the log-log plot, and that the Monte Carlo simulation using the RCD probability estimated from such linear relationship well simulates the experimentally determined surviving fraction and the relative biological effectiveness (RBE). We identified the short-term phase and long-term phase for the persistent RCD, as was the case for -irradiation.