FLASH Irradiation Spares Lung Progenitor Cells and Limits the Incidence of Radio-induced Senescence

Nom de la revue
Clinical Cancer Research
Charles Fouillade, Sandra Curras-Alonso, Lorena Giuranno, Eddy Quelennec, Sophie Heinrich, Sarah Bonnet-Boissinot, Arnaud Beddok, Sophie Leboucher, Hamza Umut Karakurt, Mylène Bohec, Sylvain Baulande, Marc Vooijs, Pierre Verrelle, Marie Dutreix, Arturo Londoño-Vallejo, Vincent Favaudon
Abstract

Abstract

Purpose:
One of the main limitations to anticancer radiotherapy lies in irreversible damage to healthy tissues located within the radiation field. “FLASH” irradiation at very high dose-rate is a new treatment modality that has been reported to specifically spare normal tissue from late radiation-induced toxicity in animal models and therefore could be a promising strategy to reduce treatment toxicity.

Experimental Design:
Lung responses to FLASH irradiation were investigated by qPCR, single-cell RNA sequencing (sc-RNA-Seq), and histologic methods during the acute wound healing phase as well as at late stages using C57BL/6J wild-type and Terc−/− mice exposed to bilateral thorax irradiation as well as human lung cells grown in vitro.

Results:
In vitro studies gave evidence of a reduced level of DNA damage and induced lethality at the advantage of FLASH. In mouse lung, sc-RNA-seq and the monitoring of proliferating cells revealed that FLASH minimized the induction of proinflammatory genes and reduced the proliferation of progenitor cells after injury. At late stages, FLASH-irradiated lungs presented less persistent DNA damage and senescent cells than after CONV exposure, suggesting a higher potential for lung regeneration with FLASH. Consistent with this hypothesis, the beneficial effect of FLASH was lost in Terc−/− mice harboring critically short telomeres and lack of telomerase activity.

Conclusions:
The results suggest that, compared with conventional radiotherapy, FLASH minimizes DNA damage in normal cells, spares lung progenitor cells from excessive damage, and reduces the risk of replicative senescence.