A feasibility study of chemosensitivity assay by adhesive tumor cell culture system using biopsy specimens for gastric cancer

Drug sensitivity testing platforms for gastric cancer diagnostics

Gastric cancer diagnostics has traditionally been histomorphological and primarily the domain of surgical pathologists. Although there is an increasing usage of molecular and genomic techniques for clinical diagnostics, there is an emerging field of personalised drug sensitivity testing. In this review, we describe the various personalised drug sensitivity testing platforms and discuss the challenges facing clinical adoption of these assays for gastric cancer.

Correlation between chemosensitivity to anticancer drugs and telomerase reverse transcriptase mRNA expression in gastric cancer

Background

The determination of sensitive chemotherapy drugs for gastric cancer (GC) is one of the greatest challenges of adjuvant therapy. Here we evaluated the chemosensitivity of GC to anticancer drugs and the telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT) mRNA expression, and investigated the relationship of them.

Methods

The GC cells which were collected from 68 patients with primary GC were primary cultured. The chemosensitivity of GC cells to anticancer drugs was evaluated successfully using the MTT assay for 60 cases of GC cells, and the hTERT mRNA expression was examined in 60 cases of GC tissues and corresponding normal gastric mucosa and 6 cases of chronic superficial gastritis mucosa by in situ hybridization.

Results

Taxol, Cisplatin and 5-Fluorouracil were in general more effective than Adriamycin and Mitomycin for GC cells, and the chemosensitivity to anticancer drugs was associated with tumor histological types and a worse tumor grade. Compared to normal gastric mucosa tissues, hTERT mRNA expression was significantly increased in GC (P<0.05), which was related with a worse differentiation and drug-resistance to 5-Fluorouracil or Adriamycin in GC.

Conclusions

These data demonstrate for the first time that examinations of hTERT mRNA expression as an important factor could be used to select the chemotherapeutic drugs for GC patients.

Virtual slides

The virtual slide(s) for this article can be found here: http://www.diagnosticpathology.diagnomx.eu/vs/1793217009875483