Send This Patient's Tumor for Culture and Sensitivity

One of the primary goals in caring for patients with malignant disease is to provide a treatment program that maximizes the chance of survival and minimizes the side effects of therapy. This goal is particularly important in chemotherapy for cancer.In 1978, Salmon and colleagues1 reported a new in vitro test for determining the sensitivity or resistance of an individual patient's tumor to an anticancer drug. To perform the test, now called the human tumor stem-cell assay, tumor is removed from the patient, made into a suspension of single cells, exposed to the anticancer drug in vitro, and then cultured . . .