The tumour microenvironment is considered to be responsible for the outcome of cancer treatment and therefore it is extremely important to characterize and quantify it. Unfortunately, most of the experimental techniques available now are invasive and generally it is not known how this influences the results. Non-invasive methods on the other hand have a geometrical resolution that is not always suited for the modelling of the tumour response. Theoretical simulation of the microenvironment may be an alternative method that can provide quantitative data for accurately describing tumour tissues. This paper presents a computerized model that allows the simulation of the tumour oxygenation. The model simulates numerically the fundamental physical processes of oxygen diffusion and consumption in a two-dimensional geometry in order to study the influence of the different parameters describing the tissue geometry. The paper also presents a novel method to simulate the effects of diffusion-limited (chronic) hypoxia and perfusion-limited (acute) hypoxia. The results show that all the parameters describing tissue vasculature are important for describing tissue oxygenation. Assuming that vascular structure is described by a distribution of inter-vessel distances, both the average and the width of the distribution are needed in order to fully characterize the tissue oxygenation. Incomplete data, such as distributions measured in a non-representative region of the tissue, may not give relevant tissue oxygenation. Theoretical modelling of tumour oxygenation also allows the separation between acutely and chronically hypoxic cells, a distinction that cannot always be seen with other methods. It was observed that the fraction of acutely hypoxic cells depends not only on the fraction of collapsed blood vessels at any particular moment, but also on the distribution of vessels in space as well. All these suggest that theoretical modelling of tissue oxygenation starting from the basic principles is a robust method that can be used to quantify the tissue oxygenation and to provide input parameters for other simulations.

Purpose. To determine the dose response parameters and the fractionation sensitivity of prostate tumours from clinical results of patients treated with external beam radiotherapy. Material and methods. The study was based on five-year biochemical results from 14 168 patients treated with external beam radiotherapy. Treatment data from 11 330 patients treated with conventional fractionation have been corrected for overall treatment time and fitted with a logit equation. The results have been used to determine the optimum a/b values that minimise differences in predictions from 2838 patients treated with hypofractionated schedules. Results. Conventional fractionation data yielded logit dose response parameters for all risk groups and for all definitions of biochemical failures. The analysis of hypofractionation data led to very low a/b values (1-1.7 Gy) in all mentioned cases. neglecting the correction for overall treatment time has little impact on the derivation of a/b values for prostate cancers. Conclusions. These results indicate that the high fractionation sensitivity is an intrinsic property of prostate carcinomas and they support the use of hypofractionation to increase the therapeutic gain for these tumours.The interest in the radiobiology of prostate cancers has increased considerably since the publication of the initial report of Brenner and Hall [1] of a rather low a/b  1.5 Gy for these tumours. Indeed, according to standard clinical knowledge, a higher fractionation sensitivity than that of normal tissues at risk would suggest that a departure from the conventionally fractionated schedules and the use of higher doses per fraction for these tumours could widen the therapeutic window, leading either to the same tumour control with less complications or to better tumour response for the same level of complications [2]. The original report of a low a/b value for prostate had been based on a comparison of results from low dose rate brachytherapy with those from high dose rate external beam radiotherapy. not unexpectedly, its results have been disputed on various grounds, such as the relative biological effectiveness of brachytherapy radiation, tumour proliferation, heterogeneity of dose distributions or of tumour cell radiosensitivity, as reviewed by Dasu [3]. nevertheless, the initial report of a low a/b value for prostates had been followed by an increasing number of publications suggesting that prostate carcinomas might indeed have a high fractionation sensitivity that would favour therapeutic hypofractionation [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. Consequently, several clinical studies exploring the feasibility and effectiveness of hypofractionated schemes have been initiated in recent years [2]. Enough results have now matured to warrant a new evaluation of the clinically relevant a/b value for prostates and this is the aim of the present study. Material and methodsClinical studies reporting the outcome of prostate radiotherapy have been identified in the literature using standardised queries or trackin...

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INTRODUCTION. Tumour hypoxia is an important factor that confers radioresistance to the affected cells and could thus decrease the tumour response to radiotherapy. The development of advanced imaging methods that quantify both the extent and the spatial distribution of the hypoxic regions has created the premises to devise therapies that target the hypoxic regions in the tumour. MATERIALS AND METHODS. The present study proposes an original method to prescribe objectively dose distributions that focus the radiation dose to the radioresistant tumour regions and could therefore spare adjacent normal tissues. The effectiveness of the method was tested for clinically relevant simulations of tumour hypoxia that take into consideration dynamics and heterogeneity of oxygenation. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION. The results have shown that highly heterogeneous dose distributions may lead to significant improvements of the outcome only for static oxygenations. In contrast, the proposed method that involves the segmentation of the dose distributions and the optimisation of the dose prescribed to each segment to account for local heterogeneity may lead to significantly improved local control for clinically-relevant patterns of oxygenation. The clinical applicability of the method is warranted by its relatively easy adaptation to functional imaging of tumour hypoxia obtained with markers with known uptake properties.

Clinical experience shows that there is a therapeutic window between 60 and 70 Gy where many tumours are eradicated, but the function of the adjacent normal tissues is preserved. This implies much more cell kill in the tumour than is acceptable in the normal tissue. An SF2 of 0.5 or lower is needed to account for the eradication of all tumour cells, while an SF2 of 0.8 or higher is needed to explain why these doses are tolerated by normal tissues. No such systematic difference is known between the intrinsic sensitivity of well-oxygenated normal and tumour cells. The presence of radioresistant hypoxic cells in tumours makes it even more difficult to understand the clinical success. However, there is experimental evidence that starved cells lose their repair competence as a result of the depletion of cellular energy charge. MRS studies have shown that low ATP levels are a characteristic feature of solid tumours in rodents and man. In this paper we incorporate the concept of repair incompetence in starving, chronically hypoxic cells. The increased sensitivity of such cells has been derived from an analysis of mammalian cell lines showing inducible repair. It is proportional to the SF2 and highest in resistant cells. The distinction between acutely hypoxic radioresistant cells and chronically hypoxic radiosensitive cells provides the key to the realistic modelling of successful radiotherapy. It also opens new conceptual approaches to radiotherapy. We conclude that it is essential to distinguish between these two kinds of hypoxic cells in predictive assays and models.

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