Concepts, problems and the role of modifying agents in the relationship between recovery of cells' survival ability and mechanisms of repair of radiation lesions.

The two strands of the problem are the shapes and changes with time of cell survival curves on the one hand and the responses of cell constituents to radiation on the other. Evidence of correlations between results of studies of these two types of phenomena under the influence of a wide range of modifying agents is required to establish mechanisms. Recovery may be defined as referring to the whole cell, while repair should be regarded as a process carried out by one substance on another. The degrees of usefulness and possible deficiencies of a multi-hit/target model and a repair model for explaining cell survival curves and cell recovery are compared in a range of circumstances. A fully satisfactory model is not yet available.