Abstract: Objective To preliminarily explore the clinical value of ATP bioluminescence tumor chemosensitivity assay (ATP-TCA) in patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Methods Peripheral blood or bone marrow mononuclear cells separated from newly diagnosed AML specimens were tested in vitro for cancer chemosensitivity to eight kinds of drugs by ATP-TCA, which was used for observing the susceptibility results in vitro and analyzing the relationships among the susceptibility results in vitro, risk stratification and clinical efficacy. Results Eighteen cases of AML patients displayed different sensitivities to these eight kinds of drugs in vitro.Different drugs had different tumor growth inhibition ratio in vitro, of which the highest efficiency is aclarubicin and the highest inefficiency is pirarubicin. Fourteen cases of de novo AML patients were evaluable for clinical efficacy. Entirely consistent rate between the susceptibility in vitro and clinical efficacy was 78.6%, according to the susceptibility results of anthracycline in chemotherapy regimens. Clinical efficacy (P=0.012) and survival time (P=0.018) in patients with three different groups of risk stratification were statistically significant. Patients in high-risk groups had the shortest lifetime. Conclusion The results of ATP-TCA assay were correlated well with clinical treatment responses. The assay may be an important and effective method for individual-based chemotherapy of AML, especially in elderly AML.

Key words: acute myeloid leukemia, drug screening assay, ATP bioluminescence assay