Study of Carbon-Ion Irradiation Killing Glioma Stem Cells

Though heavy-ion therapy has demonstrated significant benefits such as well-defined range, small entrance dose and high relative biological effectiveness, the characteristics of radio-biological effects on cancer stem cells induced by heavy-ion treatment is not completely clear. In this paper, we used human glioma cancer stem cells to investigate whether heavy ions offered a biological advantage, by effectively targeting cancer stem cells, in comparison to conventional X-rays. Our results showed that the repair rate of DNA damage generated by 2 Gy of carbon ions was lower than that generated by X-rays in glioma stem cells. MTT assay showed that the viability of cancer stem cells irradiated by carbon ions was significant lower than that irradiated by X-rays. Taken together, carbon ions showed a biological advantage over X-rays by effectively targeting glioma cancer stem cells. These findings have significant importance in understanding the biological effects related to heavy-ion therapy.