Twenty different strains of the rat ascites hepatoma were used in the present study, in an attempt to find whether, by means of comparison of the X-ray dose necessary to kill 10
7 tumor cells of each tumor strain, the individual difference in radio-sensitivity existed among these tumors which were naturally all common in the normal ancestral cell, the liver cell; and if it existed, to know what biological characteristics of tumors it was related to. The results obtained are as follows:
1) Even the tumors derived from one and the same ancestry never did agree with each other in their radiosensitivity.
2) The radiosensitivity of tumors is related to their growth velocity. The slower growing tumors are more radiosensitive than the faster growing tumors. This result does not support Bergonié-Tribondeau's law.
3) X-radiation induced more remarkable damages in the tumors showing more marked polymorphism of cells than in the tumors consisting of uniform cells.
4) No correlation was found between the radiosensitivity of tumors and the sensitivity of them to HN
2 derivatives.
[The major points of the present study have been reported in the 17th General Meeting of the Japanese Cancer Association, Chiba, Japan, November 9, 1958 (12)].
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