Comparison between clinical response and in vitro drug sensitivity of primary human tumors in the adhesive tumor cell culture system.

The newly described adhesive tumor cell culture system (ATCCS) offers a distinct advantage over other assays in that it has a high plating efficiency requiring low cell inoculum, it affords workable assays in approximately 70% of specimens from the heterogenous tumor types, and it has the ability to assay up to nine drugs at four different concentrations. Clinical correlations based on the ATCCS were obtained in 65 patients undergoing 71 clinical trials. Patients with melanoma, lung cancer, and sarcoma dominated the group. The most active in vitro drug was correlated per clinical trial. Thirteen of 17 (76%) sensitive in vitro predictions and 51 of 54 (94%) resistant in vitro predictions were accurate. The assay in this study had a sensitivity of 81% and specificity of 93%. These preliminary results are encouraging and warrant prospective trials to establish the true value of this assay to patients.