Cytotoxic assays for screening anticancer agents

Abstract

In the process of identifying potential anticancer agents, the ability of a new agent is tested for cytotoxic activity against a panel of standard cancer cell lines. The National Cancer Institute (NCI) present the cytotoxic profile for each agent as a set of estimates of the dose required to inhibit the growth of each cell line. The NCI estimates are obtained from a linear interpolation method applied to the dose-response curves. In this paper non-linear fits are proposed as an alternative to interpolation. This is illustrated with data from two agents recently submitted to NCI for potential anticancer activity. Fitting of individual non-linear curves proved difficult, but a non-linear mixed model applied to the full set of cell lines overcame most of the problems. Two non-linear functional forms were fitted using random effect models by both maximum likelihood and a full Bayesian approach. Model-based toxicity estimates have some advantages over those obtained from interpolation. They provide standard errors for toxicity estimates and other derived quantities, allow model comparisons. Examples of each are illustrated.