Biophysical models in radiation biology

Models serve a variety of purposes: to link physics and biology; to interpolate and extrapolate to dose regions where direct biological measurements of statistical significance are not feasible; to address basic mechanisms; to suggest new experiments designed to test hypotheses predicted by the model. In the past, the modeling arena has been dominated by dose-response curves for cell killing which have slowly but surely incorporated more and more of the biological factors that are known to be important. At the present time, the modelers urgently need to follow the revolution in the new biology as quantitative data become available. There are several areas involved: i. the relation between DNA strand breaks, initial breaks as measured by the premature chromosome condensation technique and cell lethality. ii. modeling of oncogenic transformation as a function of dose and of radiation quality. iii. modeling of oncogenic transformation as a function of oncogene activation. iv. modeling of oncogene activation and suppressor cell deletion as a function of radiation dose and radiation quality. (author)