Practical Guidelines for Diagnostic Use of In Vitro Chemosensitivity Tests

Abstract

To date, a multitude of chemotherapy sensitivity and resistance assays (CSRAs) have been developed to examine the efficiency of diverse cytostatic drugs on a patient's tumour material in vitro, and therefore provide the opportunity of customizing the particular treatment strategy in vivo. In an attempt to assess the impact of the hitherto developed CSRAs on routine clinical practice, in 2004, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) performed a comparative analysis of previously published studies (1966 until January 2004) referring to the diverse assays and came to the conclusion that none of these assays was suitable for routine clinical practice. As the CSRAs aim to support the clinician in selecting the most efficient regimen to be applied to the individual patient, they must comply with several technical requirements. In this report, we examined the indispensable criteria for a CSRA to be broadly applicable to clinical routine use and to be meaningful for treatment recommendations not only at present but also with respect to newer cytostatic drugs in the future.