Assay of anticancer drugs in tissue culture: cell cultures of biopsies from human astrocytoma.

A method has been developed for measuring the drug sensitivity of human gliomas in short-term culture, using scintillation counting or autofluorography. Cell cultures prepared from malignant astrocytomas were treated with anticancer drugs whilst in exponential growth in microtitration plates. After drug treatment and a recovery period, residual viability was measured by [3H] leucine incorporation followed by scintillation counting or by [35S] methionine incorporation and autofluorography in situ. In 5 glioma cell lines tested against 6 drugs, the microtitration method correlated well with monolayer cloning. Although replicate samples of the same tumour showed little variation in chemosensitivity, there was marked variation between the chemosensitivities of cultures derived from the tumours of different patients. However, as variability between replicates was apparent during drug exposure or shortly after, it is important to allow the assay to run as long as possible after drug removal. It is hoped that this assay may provide the basis of a method for the prediction of in vivo chemosensitivity or the screening of potential chemotherapeutic drugs.