Skip to main content

Radiotherapy in preclinical animal models

Guest Edited by Dr Kirsten Lauber.

Radiotherapy is a central element of multimodal cancer treatment, which has experienced tremendous advancements in the recent years and decades. As such, the implementation of new imaging modalities, the improvement of treatment planning algorithms, the development of image-guidance techniques for dose administration, and the advent of new irradiation qualities have transformed radiotherapy into a versatile tool of high precision radiosurgery. In addition, biologically and immunologically motivated strategies to improve the radiotherapeutic outcome are leading to a constantly increasing number of novel combined-modality treatment approaches with molecularly targeted agents.

In order to evaluate the potential for clinical translation of these advancements, careful preclinical testing in appropriate models is absolutely indispensable.

This series from Radiation Oncology aims to introduce our readers to recent developments in preclinical radiotherapy, to present achievements as well as future challenges, and to discuss limitations.


  1. Brain metastasis is becoming increasingly prevalent in breast cancer due to improved extra-cranial disease control. With emerging availability of modern image-guided radiation platforms, mouse models of brain ...

    Authors: Niloufar Zarghami, Donna H. Murrell, Michael D. Jensen, Frederick A. Dick, Ann F. Chambers, Paula J. Foster and Eugene Wong
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2018 13:104
  2. Resistance to radiotherapy is frequently encountered in patients with glioblastoma multiforme. It is caused at least partially by the high glutathione content in the tumour tissue. Therefore, the administratio...

    Authors: E. Schültke, E. Bräuer-Krisch, H. Blattmann, H. Requardt, J. A. Laissue and G. Hildebrandt
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2018 13:89
  3. Esophageal cancer is an aggressive disease with poor survival rates. A more patient-tailored approach based on predictive biomarkers could improve outcome. We aimed to predict radiotherapy (RT) response by ima...

    Authors: Elodie Melsens, Elly De Vlieghere, Benedicte Descamps, Christian Vanhove, Ken Kersemans, Filip De Vos, Ingeborg Goethals, Boudewijn Brans, Olivier De Wever, Wim Ceelen and Piet Pattyn
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2018 13:39
  4. Preclinical radiation biology has become increasingly sophisticated due to the implementation of advanced small animal image guided radiation platforms into laboratory investigation. These small animal radioth...

    Authors: Mihaela Ghita, Stephen J. McMahon, Hannah F. Thompson, Conor K. McGarry, Raymond King, Sarah O. S. Osman, Jonathan L. Kane, Amanda Tulk, Giuseppe Schettino, Karl T. Butterworth, Alan R. Hounsell and Kevin M. Prise
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2017 12:204
  5. To investigate the feasibility of using dual-energy CT (DECT) for tissue segmentation and kilovolt (kV) dose calculations in pre-clinical studies and assess potential dose calculation accuracy gain.

    Authors: Ana Vaniqui, Lotte E. J. R. Schyns, Isabel P. Almeida, Brent van der Heyden, Stefan J. van Hoof and Frank Verhaegen
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2017 12:181
  6. Normal tissue toxicity is the dose-limiting side effect of radiotherapy. Spatial fractionation irradiation techniques, like microbeam radiotherapy (MRT), have shown promising results in sparing the normal brai...

    Authors: Soha Bazyar, Christina R. Inscoe, Thad Benefield, Lei Zhang, Jianping Lu, Otto Zhou and Yueh Z. Lee
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2017 12:127
  7. Accurate and quantitative dosimetry for internal radiation therapy can be especially challenging, given the heterogeneity of patient anatomy, tumor anatomy, and source deposition. Internal radiotherapy sources...

    Authors: Andrew B. Satterlee, Peter Attayek, Bentley Midkiff and Leaf Huang
    Citation: Radiation Oncology 2017 12:54