A blind comparison of simple bench‐top bioassays and human tumour cell cytotoxicities as antitumor prescreens

Simple bench‐top bioassays involving brine shrimp lethality, Lemna frond proliferation, and the inhibition of crown gall tumours on potato discs, as well as the human tumour cell lines A‐549 lung carcinoma, MCF‐7 breast carcinoma and HT‐29 colon adenocarcinoma, were compared for their accuracy to detect known in vivo (P‐388) active antitumour agents supplied by the National Cancer Institute. The potato disc assay was the best and showed excellent correlation to in vivo activity (p=0.008). The brine shrimp assay ( p = 0.033) proved to be superior or equally as accurate as the in vitro human solid tumour cell lines ( p = 0.033‐0.334). The Lemna assay ( p = 0.708) showed the poorest correlation. The brine shrimp and potato disc assays are suggested as convenient in‐house prescreens to existing cytotoxicity or antitumour assays.