Anticancer drug activity in human bladder tumor cell lines.

A panel of ten human bladder tumor cell lines were tested for drug sensitivity to ten standard or investigational anticancer drugs using a tumor colony assay. The activity of these anticancer agents in vitro was then compared with the clinical activity of these agents in bladder cancer. Drug activity was found in only five of the ten cell lines. In only 9 of 100 drug assays was the inhibition of colony growth lower than 30% of the controls. The activity of the more active anticancer drugs in bladder cancer (i.e., methotrexate and cisplatin) was not predicted using the tumor colony assay. Overall, the low level of activity of most anticancer drugs tested paralleled the clinical experience of drug resistance found in human bladder cancer.