Experiences with the human tumor colony-forming assay in gynecologic malignancies

Summary Tumor samples from 74 patients with gynecologic malignancies including breast cancer were processed in a soft agar colony-forming assay. None of the samples resulted in a pure single cell suspension. Of the 10 samples meeting our criteria of evaluability for chemosensitivity testing, only 5 samples showed in vitro sensitivity to any drug. Of the 3 evaluable correlations between in vitro and in vivo results, 2 were correct. Due to the low rate of evaluable samples the assay has only limited value in the assignment of chemotherapeutic drugs for patients treated at our institution.This work was supported in part by the Gesellschaft zur Bekämpfung der Krebskrankheiten Nordrhein-Westfalen