Experimental chemotherapy of germ cell tumor heterotransplanted to nude mice

: While the treatment of ovarian cancer has made remarkable progress in recent years, the chemotherapy of ovarian germ cell tumor has not as yet been fully established and remains to be improved. We investigated the effectiveness of a single-agent therapy with Vincristine (VCR), Actinomycin D (ACD), and Cyclophosphamide (CPM) against a human undifferentiated dysgerminoma's cell line (JOHYL-1) with the following results. The ratio of the number of viable cells to the total cell population treated for JOHYL-1 cells of ascitic type was 70% with VCR, 58% with CPM and 25% with ACD; hence the efficacy on this malignant cell line was the greatest with ACD followed by VCR and CPM in that descending order. Notably with CPM, a striking antitumor effect was observed from 48 to 24 hours after treatment. The L.I. attained a peak at 24, 18 and 30 hours, respectively, after treatment with VCR, ACD and CPM. The M.I. was as high as a little more than 6% at 36 hours after treatment with VCR. There also was noted a shift in the cell cycle with any of the test drugs. Morphological changes observed in the cell were most obvious with ACD followed in order by VCR and CPM. LDH & isozyme pattern: In these respects there were no striking differences among the three drugs, even though the total enzyme activity was somewhat higher with VCR.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)