Suppressive effect of low dose total body irradiation on lung metastasis: dose dependency and effective period.

The dose dependency and effective period of suppressive effects by low dose total body irradiation (TBI) in both artificial and spontaneous lung metastasis were investigated using murine squamous cell carcinoma. In the artificial lung metastasis of the tumour cells injected through a tail vein, the TBI of 0.15-0.20 Gy resulted in significant net suppression of lung colony formation. With this dose range, the effective period lasted for 12 h ranging from 9 h before to 3 h after the tumour cell injection. Similar suppressive effect was also observed in the spontaneous lung metastasis. These data suggest that careful assessment of effective dose and duration of low dose TBI on human metastasis could provide a new therapy to suppress clinical metastasis.