Evaluation of Antiproliferative Agents in Tissue Culture Model

ABSTRACT

The authors investigated the effect of single intraoperative exposure of mitomycin C(MMC), 5-fluorouracil(5-FU), and cyclosporine A(Cs A) on the glaucoma filtering surgery. Human Tenon's fibroblasts were cultured and exposed to various concentrations of each drug for 5 minutes. Cell viability was measured using MTT assay, and cell proliferation was studied by 3H-thymidine uptake test. None of MMC(up to 0.04%), 5-FU(up to 40mg/ml), Cs A(up to 20micro gram/ml) was cytocidal. However, both MMC and 5-FU inhibited proliferation of fibroblasts significantly, but not Cs A. We concluded that MMC and 5-FU improve the results of filtering surgery not by direct cytocidal effect, but by the inhibition of proliferation. As for Cs A, longer exposure time and higher concentrations were needed to have similar effect on cellular viability and proliferation.