(1) Dept. of Bioengineering and Chemical Engineering
Rice University
Houston, TX.
(2) Dept. of Plastic Surgery
M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
Houston, TX.
Radiation therapy is used increasingly as a definitive or adjunctive treatment for cancer. However, radiotherapy significantly increases the risk of vessel thrombosis which can lead to failure of the reconstruction of cancer patients after the surgical removal of their tumors. In order to test the hypothesis that soluble growth factors can protect endothelial cells from radiation damage, we examined the effects of radiation on the morphology and migration characteristics of endothelial cells. As expected, irradiation (10 and 20 Gy) arrested the proliferation of bovine pulmonary artery endothelial cells (BPAE), but did not significantly affect their migration speeds. On the other hand, the size of BPAE increased significantly after irradiation. To evaluate the effect of soluble factors, BPAE irradiation and maintenance were also conducted in the presence of basic and acidic fibroblast growth factors, epidermal growth factor, and heparin. Only heparin helped the BPAE maintain their shape and size. The other growth factors did not have a significant effect on either the migration speed or the spreading of irradiated BPAE. The clinical implications of these findings will be discussed.