TY - JOUR
T1 - The human tumor stem cell assay revisited
AU - Singletary, S. Eva
AU - Umbach, Gunter E.
AU - Spitzer, Gary
AU - Drewinko, Benjamin
AU - Tomasovic, Barbara
AU - Ajani, Jaffer
AU - Hug, Verena
AU - Blumenschein, George
PY - 1985
Y1 - 1985
N2 - The human tumor stem cell assay (HTSCA) is a bilayer soft agar system for growing fresh human tumor specimens in vitro to determine drug sensitivity and improve our understanding of tumor biology. Recent clinical correlations of 60% accuracy for predicting a positive clinical response and a 90% accuracy for predicting a lack of response to therapeutic agents suggest promising clinical usefulness. However, the clinician should be aware of the assay's inherent pitfalls, such as heterogeneity of the tumor specimen, inability to obtain pure single‐cell suspensions, low cloning efficiency, unusual drug dose‐dependent survival curves, uncertain validity of in vitro pharmacology, nonstandardized criteria for in vitro sensitivity, and the variability of in vitro results. A brief summary of the concepts, potential, and limitations of this assay are discussed.
AB - The human tumor stem cell assay (HTSCA) is a bilayer soft agar system for growing fresh human tumor specimens in vitro to determine drug sensitivity and improve our understanding of tumor biology. Recent clinical correlations of 60% accuracy for predicting a positive clinical response and a 90% accuracy for predicting a lack of response to therapeutic agents suggest promising clinical usefulness. However, the clinician should be aware of the assay's inherent pitfalls, such as heterogeneity of the tumor specimen, inability to obtain pure single‐cell suspensions, low cloning efficiency, unusual drug dose‐dependent survival curves, uncertain validity of in vitro pharmacology, nonstandardized criteria for in vitro sensitivity, and the variability of in vitro results. A brief summary of the concepts, potential, and limitations of this assay are discussed.
KW - Clonogenic assay Chemosensitivity
KW - HTSCA
KW - Human tumor cloning system
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U2 - 10.1002/stem.5530030205
DO - 10.1002/stem.5530030205
M3 - Article
C2 - 3998518
AN - SCOPUS:0022362504
SN - 0737-1454
VL - 3
SP - 116
EP - 128
JO - The International Journal of Cell Cloning
JF - The International Journal of Cell Cloning
IS - 2
ER -