Comparative studies of pulse and continuous exposure in human tumor clonogenic assay

To assess the influence of different schedules of drug exposure in human tumor clonogenic assay on in vitro cytotoxicity of antitumor drugs, the in vitro sensitivities of a human carcinoma cell line, PC-9, to various antitumor drugs were measured by using two different procedures: exposure was either by pulse for 1 h prior to plating or continuous throughout the period of growth in agar. Marked differences between the two procedures in testing actinomycin D, etoposide, 5-fluorouracil, vinblastine and vindesine but not in adriamycin, daunomycin, melphalan, nimustine and ranomustine were observed. The former and the latter were classified as schedule dependent drugs and a schedule independent drugs, respectively. In this study, the schedule dependency of in vitro drug response appears to be related mainly to time-dependency and partially to other factors, such as stability during culture in medium.