Response to doxorubicin of cultured normal and cancerous human mammary epithelial cells.
Epithelial cells were isolated and cultured from a number of human mammary specimens of both cancerous and noncancerous origin. Doxorubicin (Dx) sensitivity was measured at second passage with the use of a highly efficient clonogenic assay. For 23 different tumor specimens derived from patients without previous chemotherapy, the drug concentrations required to kill 50% of the cells varied approximately 35-fold. In contrast, for 11 tumor specimens from patients who relapsed after regimens containing Dx, the drug concentration for 50% survival varied only fivefold and the dose-response curves for these specimens clustered at the more resistant end of the spectrum. A wide range of sensitivities was also observed among 13 noncancerous mammary specimens; however, tumor tissue and noncancerous tissue from the same donor were similar. When cultures were subjected to drug incubation periods of 1 and 4 hours, dose-response curves were superimposable when plotted as a function of drug concentration multiplied by time.
D001940:Breast / Q000187:drug effects*; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000473:pathology; D002277:Carcinoma / Q000473:pathology*; D002470:Cell Survival / Q000187:drug effects; D002478:Cells, Cultured; D003114:Colony-Forming Units Assay; D004305:Dose-Response Relationship, Drug; D004317:Doxorubicin / Q000494:pharmacology*; D004848:Epithelium / Q000187:drug effects; D005260:Female; D005615:Freezing; D006801:Humans; D014021:Tissue Preservation; D014410:Tumor Stem Cell Assay
D004317:Doxorubicin