2 research outputs found
Prediction of clinical response to drugs in ovarian cancer using the chemotherapy resistance test (CTR-test)
Background In order to validate if the test result of the Chemotherapy
Resistance Test (CTR-Test) is able to predict the resistances or sensitivities
of tumors in ovarian cancer patients to drugs, the CTR-Test result and the
corresponding clinical response of individual patients were correlated
retrospectively. Results were compared to previous recorded correlations.
Methods The CTR-Test was performed on tumor samples from 52 ovarian cancer
patients for specific chemotherapeutic drugs. Patients were treated with
monotherapies or drug combinations. Resistances were classified as extreme
(ER), medium (MR) or slight (SR) resistance in the CTR-Test. Combination
treatment resistances were transformed by a scoring system into these
classifications. Results Accurate sensitivity prediction was accomplished in
79% of the cases and accurate prediction of resistance in 100% of the cases in
the total data set. The data set of single agent treatment and drug
combination treatment were analyzed individually. Single agent treatment lead
to an accurate sensitivity in 44% of the cases and the drug combination to 95%
accuracy. The detection of resistances was in both cases to 100% correct. ROC
curve analysis indicates that the CTR-Test result correlates with the clinical
response, at least for the combination chemotherapy. Those values are similar
or better than the values from a publication from 1990. Conclusions
Chemotherapy resistance testing in vitro via the CTR-Test is able to
accurately detect resistances in ovarian cancer patients. These numbers
confirm and even exceed results published in 1990. Better sensitivity
detection might be caused by a higher percentage of drug combinations tested
in 2012 compared to 1990. Our study confirms the functionality of the CTR-Test
to plan an efficient chemotherapeutic treatment for ovarian cancer patients
New in vitro system to predict chemotherapeutic efficacy of drug combinations in fresh tumor samples
Background To find the best individual chemotherapy for cancer patients, the efficacy of different chemotherapeutic drugs can be predicted by pretesting tumor samples in vitro via the chemotherapy-resistance (CTR)-Test®. Although drug combinations are widely used among cancer therapy, so far only single drugs are tested by this and other tests. However, several first line chemotherapies are combining two or more chemotherapeutics, leading to the necessity of drug combination testing methods. Methods We established a system to measure and predict the efficacy of chemotherapeutic drug combinations with the help of the Loewe additivity concept in combination with the CTR-test. A combination is measured by using half of the monotherapy’s concentration of both drugs simultaneously. With this method, the efficacy of a combination can also be calculated based on single drug measurements. Results The established system was tested on a data set of ovarian carcinoma samples using the combination carboplatin and paclitaxel and confirmed by using other tumor species and chemotherapeutics. Comparing the measured and the calculated values of the combination testings revealed a high correlation. Additionally, in 70% of the cases the measured and the calculated values lead to the same chemotherapeutic resistance category of the tumor. Conclusion Our data suggest that the best drug combination consists of the most efficient single drugs and the worst drug combination of the least efficient single drugs. Our results showed that single measurements are sufficient to predict combinations in specific cases but there are exceptions in which it is necessary to measure combinations, which is possible with the presented system