Development of radiobiology for oncology—a personal view

• Published in: Physics in medicine & biology Vol. 51; no. 13; pp. R263 - R286
• Main Author: Fowler, Jack F
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England IOP Publishing 07.07.2006
• Subjects: Animals; Body Burden; Humans; Models, Biological; Neoplasms - radiotherapy; Radiation Oncology - methods; Radiation Oncology - trends; Radiobiology - methods; Radiobiology - trends; Radiometry - methods; Radiometry - trends; Radiotherapy - methods; Radiotherapy - trends; Radiotherapy Dosage; Radiotherapy Planning, Computer-Assisted - methods; Radiotherapy Planning, Computer-Assisted - trends; Relative Biological Effectiveness
• ISSN: 0031-9155; 1361-6560
• DOI: 10.1088/0031-9155/51/13/R16

When I came into radiotherapy in 1950, I was puzzled that some patients were treated to 3000 rads (cGy) in 3 weeks but others received 4000 in 5 or 6000 in 6 weeks. When I asked why, there were no convincing answers given, except 'this is what we usually do'. It wasn't until I went to a course on 'Radiobiology for Radiotherapy' in Cambridge that I learnt about the basic theories of Douglas Lea and the very considerable history of research into radiobiology and clinical radiotherapy. And there were still some questions outstanding, such as the relative importance of intracellular repair between 'daily' fractions, whether a 2 day gap each week was a good or a bad idea, and the role of proliferation, if any, during irradiation. I thought that a few simple animal experiments might help to give answers! That led me to a continuing interest in these questions and answers, which has taken me more than 50 years to pursue. This is the very personal story of what I saw happening in the subject, decade by decade. I was happy to experience all this together with scientists in many other countries, and our own, along the way.