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Morphologic Criteria of Survival and Nonsurvival of the H.Ep. #3 Tumor Following Graduated Doses of Roentgen Rays^*

( Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Columbia University, College of Physicians and Surgeons; and Presbyterian Hospital, New York, New York, N.Y.)

A method of correlating the direct effects of irradiation at a cytomorphologic level on a human epithelial cancer, heterologously grown, with the survival of the tumor has been described. The cytomorphologic features in both the experimentally irradiated and control tumors have been quantitatively analyzed and correlated with the fate of the irradiated tumor upon retransplantation.

Under the conditions of the experimental situation, it would appear that the minimum degree of correctly predicting the viability of the tumor following irradiation, based on the described morphologic changes in the tumor cells, is 72 per cent.

Two methods of analyzing the data have been used in an attempt to reproduce two methods of analyzing comparable data in radiosensitivity testing at a clinical level.

The terminology of the two basic cell types encountered in the H.Ep. #3 tumor and their altered frequency associated with increasing amounts of irradiation have been discussed and compared with similar cells previously observed in human cervical cancers undergoing radiotherapy.

The morphologic changes produced in the H.Ep. #3 tumor cells associated with increasing doses of x-ray and the inhibitory effect of irradiation on the differentiation of the tumor cells have been discussed.

It is emphasized that the difference in the frequency of occurrence of the observed cytomorphologic changes between the irradiated tumor cells and the control tumor cells has been considered to result from the direct effect of the irradiation administered to the tumor. No consideration has been made for the host, or environmental, factors that contributed to the observed differences.

^* This work was done with the aid of U.S.P.H.S. Grant No. C 2619 and The Brook Foundation.

Presented at the American Association for Cancer Research, Atlantic City, N.J., April, 1959.

Received 5/18/59.