A system for determining the pharmacology of indirect radiation sensitizer drugs on multicellular spheroids.

We have characterized some of the physiology of multicellular spheroids of different sizes grown from Chinese hamster lung fibroblast (V79) cells. Among the parameters studied were oxygen tension distributions within the spheroid. This was achieved using ultramicroelectrodes with tip diameters of 1-5 mu and a perfusion system whereby environmental conditions such as flow, temperature, and chemical makeup of the milieu could be measured and controlled. Plateau pO2 values of less than 10 mm Hg were consistently obtained from spheroids under various conditions. We were able to modify these distributions by use of indirect radiation sensitizer drugs such as mechlorethamine HCl (mustargen) at nontoxic doses. We have also made determinations of the inhibitory capacities of several other drugs on the respiration rate of constituent cells of multicellular spheroids in single-cell suspensions. We have concluded that there are indeed hypoxic cells in spheroids whose radioresistance may be modified by essentially nontoxic levels of indirect radiosensitizer drugs and that the system described shows great promise for screening agents which may modify radiation response.