A role for endothelial cells in radiation-induced inflammation.

We conclude that endothelial cells are relatively resistant to ionizing radiation but that they play an active, hitherto unknown, role in the inflammatory response after irradiation. In the current study, this was shown in both the hippocampus, where neurogenesis and extensive cell death after irradiation occurs, and in the cerebellum, where neurogenesis no longer occurs at this developmental age.