Radiotherapy is one of the major therapies for cancer treatment. p53 acts as a central mediator of the cellular response to stressful stimuli, such as radiation. Recently it has been known that activation of the phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase (PI3K) pathway is associated with radioresistance. In this study, we investigated whether X-irradiation up-regulates PI3K in a p53-dependent manner in human colon cancer cells. In order to study this phenomenon, we have treated p53-wild type and p53-mutant type HCT116 cells with X-ray. Treatment of wild type HCT116 cells with 8 Gy resulted in a marked increase in PI3K (p85), which paralleled an increase in PTEN, a counterpart of PI3K. However, these effects of X-rays in the p53-mutant cells were not observed. These results suggest that the X-irradiation-induced up-regulation of PI3K/PTEN pathway is p53-dependent.