Hypoxia and Proton microbeam: Role of Gap Junction Intercellular Communication in Inducing Bystander Responses on Human Lung Cancer Cells and Normal Cells

Radiation-induced bystander effect (RIBE) has been identified as an important contributing factor to tumor resistance and normal tissue damage. However, the RIBE in cancer and normal cells under hypoxia remain unclear. In this study, confluent A549 cancer and WI-38 normal cells were subjected to condition of hypoxia or normoxia, before exposure to high-LET protons microbeam. After 6 h incubation, cells were harvested and assayed for colony formation, micronucleus formation, chromosome aberration and western blotting. Our results show that there were differences of RIBE in bystander A549 and WI-38 cells under hypoxia and normoxia. The differences were also observed in the roles of HIF-1α expression in bystander A549 and WI-38 cells under both conditions. Furthermore, inhibition of gap junction intercellular communication (GJIC) showed a decrease in toxicity of hypoxia-treated bystander A549 cells, but increased in bystander WI-38 cells. These findings clearly support that GJIC protection of bystander normal cells from toxicity while enhancing in bystander cancer cells. Together, the data show a promising strategy for high-LET radiation in designing an entire new line of drugs, either increase or restore GJIC in bystander cancer cells which in turn leads to enhancement of radiation accuracy for treatment of hypoxic tumors.