Title:Drug Sensitivity Testing for Cancer Therapy, Technique Analysis and
Trends
Volume: 18
Issue: 1
Author(s): Da-Yong Lu*Ting-Ren Lu
Affiliation:
- School of Life Sciences, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200444, P.R. China
Keywords:
Drug sensitivity testing, cancer pathology, neoplasm metastasis, personalized medicine, drug selection, cancer pharmacology.
Abstract: The techniques and qualities of drug sensitivity testing (DST) for anticancer treatment
have grown rapidly in the past two decades worldwide. Much of DST progress came from advanced
systems of technical versatility (faster, highly-throughput, highly-sensitive, and smaller in
tumor quantity). As the earliest drug selective system, biomedical knowledge and technical advances
for DST are mutually supported. More importantly, many pharmacological controversies
are resolved by these technical advances. With this technical stride, the clinical landscape of DST
entered into a new phase (>500 samples per testing and extremely low quantity of tumor cells). As
a forerunner of the drug selection system, DST awaits a new version that can adapt to complicated
therapeutic situations and diverse tumor categories in the clinic. By upholding this goal of pathogenic
and therapeutic diversity, DST could eventually cure more cancer patients by establishing
high-quality drug selection systems. To smoothen DST development, there is a need to increase the
understanding of cancer biology, pathology and pharmacology (cancer heterogeneity, plasticity,
metastasis and drug resistance) with well-informative parameters before chemotherapy. In this article,
medicinal and technical insights into DST are especially highlighted.
