Time course of ovarian tumour growth in soft agar culture.

Single time point assessment is usually employed in the Human Tumour Cloning System as the only parameter for in vitro growth. This does not seem to give a fair expression of the dynamic biological properties of tumour growth and time dependent effects, e.g. of cytotoxic drugs. We studied the time course of colony formation in temporal growth patterns (TGPs) and compared this method of growth evaluation with conventional single time point assessment in 57 samples of ovarian tumour cultures in the HTCS. A first advantage of the use of TGPs is that more cultures become evaluable, as this assessment over time can detect a rise in the number of colonies in dishes where colony-like clumps have initially been seeded. Thus only 28 of the cultures were evaluable for single time point assessment, whereas 57 were available for TGP evaluation. Growth was more often seen at TGP evaluation (14/57) than at single day assessment (8/57). Evaluation of growth over the course of time potentially allows detection of sensitivity to drugs. Furthermore TGPs reflect the dynamics of biological growth. These features cannot be studied in single time point assessment.