Prediction of drug resistance in cancer chemotherapy: the Kern and DiSC assays.

In the opinion of the authors, good medical practice demands the avoidance of ineffective therapies and good cancer chemotherapy generally demands the avoidance of inactive drugs. The authors present their viewpoint that randomized trials are not required to prove that physicians should not administer inactive drugs and that existing cell culture assays are acceptably accurate in identifying inactive drugs. They describe and advocate the use of two such tests to aid in choosing between different forms of therapy that would otherwise be equally acceptable in the absence of test information. Strengths, weaknesses, and applications of the assays are discussed.