Human colorectal tumours in short‐term organ culture A stathmokinetic study

Abstract

Short-term organ culture, using a technique to preserve epithelial/stromal interaction and metabolism, is a useful technique for carrying out kinetic studies on human colorectal carcinoma and adjacent normal mucosa, providing initial perturbations of proliferative indices are allowed to settle. Tumors require 3.0 .mu.g/ml vincristine for complete metaphase arrest compared with mucosa, which needs 0.5 .mu.g/ml, a 6-fold difference. Using a stathmokinetic technique, the birth rate of tumor cells is 10.21 cells/1000 cells per h, compared with 7.73 cells/1000 cells per h for mucosa, a statistically significant difference (P < 0.01).