Predictive testing in cancer chemotherapy

Abstract

During the last thirty years several in vitro techniques have been developed to predict sensitivity of individual tumours. When the results of these techniques were correlated with the clinical response in larger groups of patients, the accuracy for predicting resistance was greater than for predicting sensitivity. Amongst the culture techniques the colony-forming assays have received much attention. Research with tumour cell lines and the sound biological basis do support this preference on other techniques. Studies on these assays have come from several independent laboratories, who report comparable results. Improvement of the culture technique and more insight into the in vitro pharmacology is needed, before application on wider scale is justified. Colony-forming culture techniques have not only been propagated for individualized chemotherapy, but also for drug screening. New antitumour agents and analogous can be screened in a short time for their sensitivity in many histologic tumour types.

Ex vivo evaluation of tumor cell specific drug responses in malignant pleural effusions

“…Such attempts to determine the sensitivity of individual tumors to different drugs in vitro have been performed since long. While individual studies have had marked success for prediction [ 23 – 25 ], the analysis is not yet considered sufficiently valid for application in a clinical routine [ 26 , 27 ].…”