Late Effects of Radiation on the Central Nervous System: Role of Vascular Endothelial Damage and Glial Stem Cell Survival

Coderre, J. A., Morris, G. M., Micca, P. L., Hopewell, J. W., Verhagen, I., Kleiboer, B. J. and van der Kogel, A. J. Late Effects of Radiation on the Central Nervous System: Role of Vascular Endothelial Damage and Glial Stem Cell Survival. Radiat. Res. 166, 495–503 (2006). Selective irradiation of the vasculature of the rat spinal cord was used in this study, which was designed specifically to address the question as to whether it is the endothelial cell or the glial progenitor cell that is the target responsible for late white matter necrosis in the CNS. Selective irradiation of the vascular endothelium was achieved by the intraperitoneal (ip) administration of a boron compound known as BSH (Na2B12H11SH), followed by local irradiation with thermal neutrons. The blood-brain barrier is known to exclude BSH from the CNS parenchyma. Thirty minutes after the ip injection of BSH, the boron concentration in blood was 100 μg 10B/ g, while that in the CNS parenchyma was below the detection limit of the boron analysis system,