PATTERNS OF CELL SURVIVAL FOLLOWING TREATMENT WITH ANTI-TUMOR AGENTS INVITRO

Cell cultures provide a rapid, efficient and economic research system to investigate cell killing effects of antitumor agents. Only the colony-formation technique appears appropriate to determine post-drug treatment cell survival. Utilizing this technique, the lethal effect of 22 antitumor agents on a human lymphoma cell line were determined after brief exposure (1 hr) to the agent. The resulting survival curves corresponded to one of five patterns: simple exponential, biphasic exponential, threshold exponential, exponential plateau and ineffectual. These patterns may be useful in the classification of cell-antitumor drug interactions. © 1979.