Abstract
Many aspects of research in radiobiology and radiotherapy depend upon the belief that hypoxic cells exist in human tumours, and that these radioresistant cells determine whether or not the tumour will be cured or will recur after radiotherapy. Hypoxic cells are believed to develop because of the imbalance between tumour cell production and the growth of blood vessels to provide nutrients, including oxygen (1,2). A corded structure similar to that shown in Figure 1 was first demonstrated by Thomlinson and Gray in human lung tumours (3). They postulated that necrosis at 100–150 μm resulted from severe hypoxia and that a rim of hypoxic cells which were about to die existed at the boundary between the viable and dead tissue.
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© 1982 Plenum Press, New York
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Denekamp, J. (1982). Biological Methods for Studying Radiosensitization. In: Breccia, A., Rimondi, C., Adams, G.E. (eds) Advanced Topics on Radiosensitizers of Hypoxic Cells. NATO Advanced Study Institutes Series, vol 43. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-0399-3_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-0399-3_6
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