Oncology for surgeons-cell
kinetics
David A. Rew
INTRODUCTION
Radical surgery alone is insufficient to guarantee cure for many patients with solid tumours, and the search continues for better prognostic indices and adjuvant therapies. Cell kinetic studies describe cell proliferation in both normal and malignant tissues, and in particular the timing and duration of proliferative events. Owing to the limitations of earlier research tools, it has been surprisingly difficult to learn about the dynamic behaviour of living cells in vivo. Static indices such as the thymidine labelling index or flow cytometric S phase fraction (SPF) have been widely studied under the guise of cell kinetics, but these give no indication of the rate of cell production. For example, a tumour with a high SPF but a long cell cycle time may be proliferating more slowly than a tumour with the converse characteristics.
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