1988 Volume 79 Issue 2 Pages 227-234
It is very important to know which anti-cancer agent is most effective before these drugs are administered to the patient. Although there have been various kinds of chemosensititity test reported, none of them is perfect. The chemosensitivity assay defined by the incorporation of radioactive materials is known to be rapid and easy but only used for the cases of gastrointestinal or lung cancers. In this report, fundamental analysis of this assay is carried out for the purpose of the clinical application to genitourinary cancers. After harvesting the cells on filter paper by automatic multiple cell harvester, the paper was dried for 50 seconds. This modification spared several steps, formerly used, such as harvesting the cells on a glass fiber paper, drying the paper at room temperature, treating with 5% TCA, drying again at room temperature and keeping in scintillation counting fluid at 4°C overnight. The cells used in this experiment are derived from a human urinary bladder carcinoma cell line (NTB-2), a human prostatic carcinoma cell line (PC-3), a carcinoma of human urinary bladder transplantable to nude mice (NM-B-1) and a human prostatic carcinoma transplantable to nude mice (PRO-1). The best conditions to perform this assay, determined by the above four lines, composed of cell number 1×104/well and measurement of incorporated radioactive materials on day 4. Ten kinds of anticancer agents suppressed DNA synthesis most effectively and had least effect on RNA synthesis in PC-3 and protein synthesis is most inhibited in NBT-2. These data demonstrate that it is decided by the cancer cells but not by the anti-cancer agents, which of DNA, RNA or protein synthesis is suppressed most effectively. Two months after subcutaneous transplantation of PC-3 to nude mice, this tumor was excised for chemosensitivity to compare with the original in vitro cancer cell line. The same results of chemosensitivity between excised tumor and an in vitro cell line were obtained using ten kinds of anti-cancer agents at three different concentrations. These data show that the radioactive material is incorporated into tumor cells.
