International Journal of Cell Cloning, Vol 7, 232-241, Copyright © 1989 by AlphaMed Press
Comparison between clonogenic and cytotoxic assays for measuring LAK cell activity
HC Kluin-Nelemans, D van der Harst, JF van den Burgh, S van Luxemburg and A Brand
Department of Experimental Hematology, University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands.
The antiproliferative effect of lymphokine-activated killer (LAK) cells was
studied using a clonogenic assay in an attempt to find a model for
predicting this effect in vivo or ex vivo (in the case of purging) in
cancer treatment. The results were compared with the standard 51Cr- release
cytotoxic assay. Cells from clonogenic neoplastic cell lines (K562 and
HL-60) were plated in methylcellulose with LAK cells obtained from ten
different donors in various effector-to-target (E:T) ratios. At E:T ratios
of 16:1, elimination of greater than 90% of the clonogenic cells was seen
in 20 of 21 experiments, whereas such lysis was incidentally found in the
51Cr-release assay. In almost all paired combinations, clonogenic cells
tested in a colony assay were more sensitive to kill by LAK cells than the
whole tumor cell suspensions measured in the 51Cr-release assay.
