ABSTRACT
Key points 39 Bibliography 39 Further reading 40
The successful use of radiation to treat cancer results primarily from its ability to cause the death of individual tumour cells. As discussed in Chapter 2, the biological consequences of irradiation, including cell death, are highly influenced by pathways within the DNA damage response (DDR) system. The DDR determines not only the sensitivity of cells to die following irradiation, but also the type of cell death that occurs, and the timing of cell death. Because the DDR differs among different types of normal and tumour cells (and perhaps even within different populations of tumour cells), the manifestation of cell death can also differ widely among different cell types.
