Abstract
The aim of the study was to evaluate cellular drug resistance in B cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia (B-CLL) in vitro, and compare it with that in acute myelocytic leukemia (AML) and acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL). In vitro drug resistance was analyzed by the fluorometric microculture cytotoxicity assay (FMCA) in all samples from patients with leukemia sent to our laboratory between 1992 and 2001. Up to 14 standard drugs were evaluated in samples from 66 patients with B-CLL, 212 patients with AML and 80 patients with ALL. B-CLL cells were found to be more sensitive than cells from both AML and ALL to cytarabine, cladribine, fludarabine, doxorubicin, idarubicin, vincristine and cyclophosphamide (p<0.05). No difference in cellular drug resistance was found between B-CLL and ALL cells for prednisolone, whereas AML cells were more resistant (p<0.0001). In B-CLL, cells from patients who had received previous chemotherapy were more resistant to almost all tested drugs as compared to cells from treatment-naive patients. In AML and ALL, in vitro drug resistance was not related to previous chemotherapy. For all drugs, there was a good agreement between the activity in vitro and the known clinical disease-specific activity. The study also demonstrated an acquired cellular drug resistance in B-CLL, but not in the acute leukemias.
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