Flow cytometry-assisted Monte Carlo simulation predicts clonogenic survival of cell populations with lognormal distributions of radiopharmaceuticals and anticancer drugs

摘要

PurposeAlthough the distribution of therapeutic agents within cell populations may appear uniform at the macroscopic level, the distribution at the multicellular level is nonuniform. As such, the mean agent concentration in tissue may not be a suitable quantity for use in predicting biological effects. Failure in chemotherapy and targeted radionuclide therapy has been attributed, in part, to the ubiquity of lognormal distributions of therapeutic agents. To improve capacity to predict biological response, this work develops approaches that determine the fate of a cell population on a cell-by-cell basis.