Polyamines as predictors of success and failure in cancer chemotherapy.

Polyamines appear to have clinical utility for monitoring cancer therapy. Investigations on the patterns of urinary excretion of polyamines in patients receiving cancer chemotherapy and studies of the tritiated-thymidine labelling index of tumour cells in a subgroup of these patients form the basis for a hypothesis that spermidine can serve as a marker of tumour-cell kill, whereas putrescine appears to reflect the proliferative behaviour or "growth fraction" of the tumour. Although tests of this hypothesis are necessary to establish the predictive value of polyamines for monitoring cancer therapy, it is clear that polyamines may provide important new information on tumour cytokinetic parameters.