Background Chemotherapy for pancreatic carcinoma often has severe side effects that limit its efficacy. 1, 2, 3) as well as per tumour probe in total (values ranging from 0 to 9). A tumour probe was declared as being significantly resistant to cytotoxic treatment when it showed a score of 2 for at least one drug dose or when it reached the total score of 5 out of a maximum of 9 per 55056-80-9 time point (i.e. more than 50%). A calculation is given as example in Table ?Table11 for tumour probe 2. Table 1 Calculation of resistance for tumour probe 2. Please note, that this scores and definition of resistance have been exclusively designed for the present study by L. Edler and W. Rittgen from your Department of Biostatistics, German Malignancy Research Center. The outcomes of a group of tumour probes were summarized in respective ratios obtained by adding the individual scores for each condition as well as in total over the number of probes and by dividing through the number of probes (compare Table ?Table1).1). The results of the evaluation of each single tumour probe are available upon request. The tumour populace was considered as suffering from resistance as a whole, when for one therapeutic dose all ratios were higher than 50% or when 5 of the total of 9 combinations were higher than 50%. The statistical method explained was applied independently to all three time points. Established cell linesCorresponding to the analysis of patient-derived tumour probes, cell lines were investigated in a 2-factorial design consisting of one dose of DEX (1 M) and a control and three doses of cytotoxic treatment and a control resulting in a total of 8 experimental conditions. Viability of the cells under each condition was decided as mean of 8 replicates (MTT-assay) or as mean of 6 replicates (apoptosis) as explained above. Xenografts on nude miceA distribution free test for tumour growth curve analyses was utilized for therapy experiments with xenografted malignancy cells as explained [18]. Results DEX induces resistance towards gemcitabine and cisplatin in vitro To investigate whether DEX might safeguard pancreatic carcinoma cell lines by interfering with apoptosis we treated MIA-Pa-Ca2, T3M4, DAN-G, Capan-1, Capan-2, PANC-1, Colo-357, AsPC1, SU8686 and BxPc-3 cells with gemcitabine or cisplatin in the presence or absence of DEX. 72 h later, apoptosis was detected by annexin-FITC followed by FACS-analysis. While cytotoxic drugs alone strongly induced apoptosis, the presence of DEX inhibited this effect in all cell lines examined (Fig. ?(Fig.1A,1A, ?,2A).2A). No induction of apoptosis occurred in untreated cells or cells treated with the solvents alone. These data are confirmed by the measurement of DNA-fragmentation by the nicoletti method or by determining the cell morphology by the FSC/SSC profile and FACS-analysis ” [observe Additional file I]”. In light of inhibited apoptosis we next analyzed whether DEX might influence growth of pancreatic carcinoma cell lines treated with cytotoxic drugs. The same set of cells was treated as explained above and viability was detected by the MTT-assay. While gemcitabine or cisplatin alone strongly reduced viability, the presence of DEX diminished the cytotoxic effect in all cell lines (Fig. ?(Fig.1B,1B, ?,2B).2B). In order to know whether this protective effect of DEX might be long lasting we treated pancreatic malignancy cells with DEX in the presence or absence of gemcitabine. One, two and three weeks later viable cells were counted by trypan blue exclusion and cells were photographed after two weeks (Fig. ?(Fig.3).3). DEX strongly enhanced basal proliferation and increased the viability of gemcitabine-treated cells above levels of untreated controls. Thus, DEX inhibits apoptosis and promotes proliferation of pancreatic carcinoma cells after treatment with cytotoxic drugs in vitro. Physique 1 DEX inhibits apoptosis and promotes proliferation in response to gemcitabine in vitro. The established pancreatic malignancy cells MIA-Pa-Ca2, T3M4, DAN-G, Capan-1, Capan-2, PANC-1, Colo-357, AsPC1, SU8686 and BxPc-3 were left either untreated (CO) or were … Physique 2 DEX inhibits apoptosis and promotes proliferation in response to cisplatin in vitro. Cells were WNT6 treated and analyzed as explained in Fig. 1 except that cisplatin (7, 13 M) was used instead of gemcitabine. Physique 3 DEX-pretreated cells are guarded despite three 55056-80-9 weeks 55056-80-9 incubation with gemcitabine in vitro. AsPC1 cells were left untreated (CO) or were treated with 0.1 M DEX (DEX), 25 M GEM (GEM), or both together (DEX/GEM). One, two and three weeks … DEX induces.