A Mathematical Model for Stem Cell Competition to Maintain a Cell Pool Injured by Radiation Exposure

Cancer risk of low-dose-rate ionizing radiation exposure is one of the most important issues in radiation protection. Tissue stem cells have been considered one of the targets of radiation-induced carcinogenesis. There has been a hypothesis that the carcinogenic effects of radiation can be reduced if damaged stem cells are eliminated via stem cell competition between damaged and intact stem cells. This would be particularly effective under very low-dose-rate conditions, where only a few stem cells in a stem cell pool are affected by radiation. In this presentation, I will introduce a simple mathematical model to discuss the influence of stem cell competition on the accumulation of radiation damage and show that the character of damaged cells and the size of the stem cell pool may affect the accumulation of radiation damage.

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