Cell-based assays for profiling activity and safety properties of cancer drugs.

Introduction: Our goal was to establish versatile and high capacity assays to characterize activity and toxicity of chemotherapeutics. The major anti-cancer activity indicators of these agents included inhibition of proliferation and induction of apoptosis to cancer cells. In addition, cytotoxicity and myelosuppressive activity to normal cells were parameters to evaluate toxicity of these drugs.

Human primary renal cells as a model for toxicity assessment of chemo-therapeutic drugs.

Chemo-therapeutic drugs act on cancerous and normal cells non-selectively and often cause organ impairments during treatment. Improving safety or reducing toxicity becomes an important challenge for developing better anticancer drugs. In the present study, effects of selected anticancer drugs (camptothecin, doxorubicin, colchicine, paclitaxel, cisplatin, and carboplatin) on cell viability and proliferation was investigated.