title: The ChemoFx assay: an ex vivo chemosensitivity and resistance assay for predicting patient response to cancer chemotherapy.
abstract: The ChemoFx Assay is an ex vivo assay designed to predict the sensitivity and resistance of a given patient's solid tumor to a variety of chemotherapy agents. A portion of a patient's solid tumor, as small as a core biopsy, is mechanically disaggregated and established in primary culture where malignant epithelial cells migrate out of tumor explants to form a monolayer. Cultures are verified as epithelial and exposed to increasing doses of selected chemotherapeutic agents. The number of live cells remaining post-treatment is enumerated microscopically using automated cell-counting software. The resultant cell counts in treated wells are compared with those in untreated control wells to generate a dose-response curve for each chemotherapeutic agent tested on a given patient specimen. Features of each dose-response curve are used to score a tumor's response to each ex vivo treatment as "responsive," "intermediate response," or "non-responsive." Collectively, these scores are used to assist an oncologist in making treatment decisions.
authors.affiliation: Precision Therapeutics, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
authors.forename: Stacey L
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Brower
authors.forename: Jeffrey E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Fensterer
authors.forename: Jason E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Bush
mesh_terms: D000971:Antineoplastic Combined Chemotherapy Protocols / Q000494:pharmacology / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D002452:Cell Count; D018929:Cell Culture Techniques / Q000379:methods; D004305:Dose-Response Relationship, Drug; D004341:Drug Evaluation / Q000379:methods*; D019008:Drug Resistance, Neoplasm; D006801:Humans; D007150:Immunohistochemistry / Q000379:methods; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000188:drug therapy*; D011379:Prognosis; D016896:Treatment Outcome; D014407:Tumor Cells, Cultured