Klin Onkol 2000; 13(Speciál2 2000): 18-21.
Summary: Cancer continues to cause significant mortality and the use of standard cytotoxic chemotherapy has reached a therapeutical plateau. Currently, the process of selecting chemotherapy is a source of trial and error neglecting biological individuality of each tumor and its bearer. The improvement of treatment results is expected from ex vivo drug sensitivity testing which may allow to choose the most effective drugs for individual patient and to exclude agents to which the tumor cells exert resistance. The paper reviews current methods used to test index in vitro conditions the sensitivity of tumors to a panel of anticancer agents. It also does a bit of thinking on some limitations and drawbacks of each technique. Special attention is paid to the clinical relevance of the individualized cancer therapy based on in vitro drug selection.
