Morphological responses of benign human prostatic hypertrophic tissue to chemotherapeutic agents in an in vitro culture system.

The in vitro maintenance of hypertrophic tissue with fluid containing cytotoxic drugs showed more degenerative changes in prostatic epithelium and stroma of the tissue compared with concurrently cultured aliquots of control tissue. It is suggested that theses morphological changes can be related with functional activity of the tissue. The mechanism of such an action is at present unsettled, but an interference on known enzymatic systems regulating prostatic growth seems likely. This system provides an added technique for the evaluation of drugs considered for possible therapeutic testing in human prostatic cancer states.