[Proliferation kinetics of tumor cells. Histoautoradiographic studies of squamous cell carcinomas of the cervix uteri in the human].

Tissue samples of 42 untreated squamous cell carcinoma of the uterine cervix were labeled in vitro with 3H-thymidine and studied histoautoradiographically. The greatly differing labeling indices (1.1-35.5%) showed no dependence on the age of the patients. Using multiple biopsies in 14 patients with cervical carcinoma we found, that the labeling indices were decreasing in the course of irradiation therapy. In spite of the proliferative heterogenity, the variable duration of their DNA synthetic phase and the differing growth fraction of malignant tumors the autoradiographic registration of the S-phase fraction is a valuable method to characterization of their proliferative activity.