Systems Cancer Biology and the Controlling Mechanisms for the J-Shaped Cancer Dose Response: Towards Relaxing the LNT Hypothesis.

The hormesis phenomena or J-shaped dose response have been accepted as a common phenomenon regardless of the involved biological model, endpoint measured and chemical class/physical stressor. This paper first introduced a mathematical dose response model based on systems biology approach. It links molecular-level cell cycle checkpoint control information to clonal growth cancer model to predict the possible shapes of the dose response curves of Ionizing Radiation (IR) induced tumor transformation frequency. J-shaped dose response curves have been captured with consideration of cell cycle checkpoint control mechanisms. The simulation results indicate the shape of the dose response curve relates to the behavior of the saddle-node points of the model in the bifurcation diagram. A simplified version of the model in previous work of the authors was used mathematically to analyze behaviors relating to the saddle-node points for the J-shaped dose response curve. It indicates that low-linear energy transfer (LET) is more likely to have a J-shaped dose response curve. This result emphasizes the significance of systems biology approach, which encourages collaboration of multidiscipline of biologists, toxicologists and mathematicians, to illustrate complex cancer-related events, and confirm the biphasic dose-response at low doses.