Quantitative Assay for Evaluating Immunocompetence and DNA Repair Capacity

Abstract

Incorporation of radioactive thymidine into newly synthesized DNA is the basis of an assay frequently to study immunosuppression in cancer patients. It has also been used to measure the amount of excision repair performed by nonreplicating cells damaged by carcinogens. For human lymphocytes (and probably other cell types), these assays are unreliable as they are currently being performed. We report a modified assay that allows accurate comparisons of the immunocompetence and DNA repair capacity of different individuals. With this assay, cells can be studied in their autologous plasma and the role of biological response modifiers can be assessed. [J Natl Cancer Inst 1988;80:1112–1118]