[Chemosensitivity test and its clinical application]

The achievement of complete response in cancer chemotherapy is most important for prolongation of survival period and improvement of quality in patient's life. Because of the above, chemosensitivity-oriented chemotherapy is required. Human tumor clonogenic assay (HTCA) and subrenal capsule assay (SRCA) provide relatively precise in vitro and in vivo methods for determining the chemosensitivity of individual cancer patients. The success rates are 52% in HTCA and 77% in SRCA. HTCA has an initiative for an evaluation using fluid samples and SRCA can be used against lymphomas and sarcomas which show low success rates in HTCA. Until now both methods show high predictivity of drug response in clinical situation and especially high true positive rate in SRCA is striking.