The radiosensitivity of cultured human and mouse keratinocytes.

Clonogenic survival assays after gamma-radiation in vitro were performed on freshly isolated and subcultured keratinocytes from mouse skin, mouse tongue and human skin. Survival curves were constructed by fitting the data to a multi-target model of cell survival. When subcultured, keratinocytes from all sites produced survival curves which showed a reduced shoulder region and an increased D0 when compared with their freshly isolated counterparts. Freshly isolated human skin keratinocytes were more radiosensitive than mouse keratinocytes from either skin or tongue.