Method for predicting chemosensitivity of anti-cancer drugs

摘要

An assay for determining the sensitivity of an individual patient tumor to particular chemotherapeutic drugs relies on growth of the neoplastic tumor cells in a mass culture. The mass culture medium provides metabolites essential for the growth of the cells, even in the presence of the particular drug being tested, which is usually an anti-metabolic drug. The mass culture of cells is exposed to a labelled analog of the drug, and the uptake of the labelled drug analog determined. By comparing the amount of the drug uptake by the neoplastic cells with that of the corresponding normal cells, drug sensitivity may be assessed. The method is particularly useful with fluorescently-labelled drugs where the uptake may be assessed by use of a fluorescence activated cell sorter.