In vitro chemotherapeutic testing of urologic tumors.

We studied 20 transitional cell tumors of the bladder and 25 adenocarcinomas of the kidney in vitro to determine their chemotherapeutic sensitivity. The different sensitivity patterns among the individual tumors were demonstrated. Identical drug sensitivity patterns could be identified in the primary and metastatic sites, and in tumor tissue removed from the primary and metastatic deposits in the same patient. Human renal adenocarcinoma maintained in the athymic mouse demonstrated identical chemotherapeutic sensitivity patterns in vitro and in vivo. Our data would support that these in vitro chemotherapy studies may assist in the selection of agents to use in human tumor-bearing hosts.