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Australasian Biometrics and New Zealand Statistical Association Joint Conference 2001
December 10-13, 2001
Park Royal Hotel
Christchurch, New Zealand

Organizers
David Baird, Dave Saville, Harold Henderson, Peter Johnstone, Marco Reale, Irene Hudson, Julian Visch, Roger Littlejohn

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Towards an assay for ionizing radiation sensitivity
by
Natalie Thorne
The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI)

About 1-5% of cancer patients receiving standard radiotherapy develop hypersensitivity reactions in their normal tissues around the tumour site. Most of these severe reactors, radiation sensitive (RS) patients, cannot be identified before the course of their treatment. No clinically useful biological assay has been found to discriminate between RS and non-sensitive (CL) patients, though there is evidence to suggest a genetic basis for the sensitivity to radiation. Although the proportion of RS patients is small, they significantly reduce the ionizing radiation dose that can safely be administered to all patients.

Gene expression profiles of RS and CL patients will be used in an attempt to find a procedure to predict sensitivity status. With so few patients being sensitive, finding a predictor which performs well will be a challenge. If such a predictor could be found then an increased radiation dose conferring higher survival could safely be administered to most radiotherapy patients, and confirmed RS patients could be offered alternative treatment.

We have access to cell lines derived from cohorts of prostate and breast cancer patients including both RS and CL. cDNA microarray experiments will be conducted to compare the gene expression profiles of these cell lines at either 0 and 20 Gray radiation doses. It is hoped that the analysis of this data will yield genes that can be used to discriminate RS from CL patients. This will be confirmed by either an independent data set or by cross-validation methods.

This is joint work between Terry Speed (WEHI), Sahar Bassal (The Peter MacCallum Cancer Institute, PMCI), Carl Sprung (PMCI) and Michael McKay (PMCI).

Date received: August 30, 2001

Copyright © 2001 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Conferences Inc. Document # cahg-53.