Soft agar colony formation assay for in vitro testing of sensitivity to chemotherapy of gynecologic malignancies.

In vitro growth of tumor cells may provide a way of testing the effectiveness of chemotherapeutic agents in the treatment of cancer. In 1980 and 1981, operations for gynecologic malignancy were performed on 610 Mayo Clinic patients, and malignant tissue and fluids were obtained from 204 cancers that involved the vulva, uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries. These yielded 76 clonogenic stem-cell preparations; and various chemotherapeutic agents were tested against these 76 tumors on soft agar. Considered in this study were the overall process of culturing the samples of tumors and, especially, the data from the preparations that showed sufficient growth of tumor cells for testing. Our guiding concerns were the usefulness of this method to gynecologists and the possible benefits to patients.