Radioprotection of hematopoietic progenitors by low dose amifostine prophylaxis.

Thomas M Seed, Cynthia E Inal, Vijay K Singh

Index: Int. J. Radiat. Biol. 90(7) , 594-604, (2014)

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Abstract

Amifostine is a highly efficacious cytoprotectant when administered in vivo at high doses. However, at elevated doses, drug toxicity manifests for general, non-clinical radioprotective purposes. Various strategies have been developed to avoid toxic side-effects: The simplest is reducing the dose. In terms of protecting hematopoietic tissues, where does this effective, non-toxic minimum dose lie?C3H/HEN mice were administered varying doses of amifostine (25-100 mg/kg) 30 min prior to cobalt-60 irradiation and euthanized between 4-14 days for blood and bone marrow collection and analyses.Under steady-state, amifostine had little effect on bipotential and multi-potential marrow progenitors but marginally suppressed a more primitive, lineage negative progenitor subpopulation. In irradiated animals, prophylactic drug doses greater than 50 mg/kg resulted in significant regeneration of bipotential progenitors, moderate regeneration of multipotential progenitors, but no significant and consistent regeneration of more primitive progenitors. The low amifostine dose (25 mg/kg) failed to elicit consistent and positive, radioprotective actions on any of the progenitor subtypes.Radioprotective doses for amifostine appear to lie between 25 and 50 mg/kg. Mature, lineage-restricted progenitors appear to be more responsive to the protective effects of low doses of amifostine than the more primitive, multipotential progenitors.