Rapid and quantitative method for evaluating the personal therapeutic potential of cancer drugs

An in vitro, rapid, and quantitative cell-based assay is needed to predict the efficacy of cancer drugs in individual patients, because a cancer patient may have unconventional aspects of tumor development. Here we report a rapid and label-free quantitative method for verifying apoptosis in living cancer cells cultured on a sensor chip with a newly developed high-precision surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor. The time-course cell reaction was monitored as the SPR angle change rate for 5 min during a 35-min cell culture of pancreatic cancer lines with a drug. The time-course cell reaction was significantly related to cell viability counted after 48 h as assessed by caspase-3 activity assay of apoptosis. Furthermore, the detected SPR signal was derived from the decrease in inner mitochondrial membrane potential. The results obtained are universally valid for various cancer drugs mediating apoptosis through different cell-signaling pathways and even for combined use in various pancreatic cancer cell lines. This system can be applied in a clinical setting to evaluate the personal therapeutic potential of drugs including pharmacodynamic interactions.