In vitro testing to a panel of potential chemotherapeutics and current concepts of chemotherapy in benign meningiomas

• One additional treatment option for benign meningiomas is chemotherapy.
• Even benign meningiomas express a variable sensitivity to a panel of drugs.
• MTT assay yields consistent and reliable estimates of at least chemoresistance.
• Direct correlations were found between EC50 of different chemotherapeutics.
• The EC50 of VCR varied with histological subtypes of benign meningiomas.

Treatment of benign meningiomas remains a challenge, especially when they involve the skull-base or when surgery and radiation fail. Moreover, a recent in vitro MTT (3-(4,5-dimethyl-2-thiazolyl)-2,5-diphenyl-2H-tetrazolium bromide) study testing hydroxyurea, temozolomide and other targeting agents failed to identify drugs effective in their treatment; therefore the search for further more effective agents continues. We performed a thorough review of in vitro investigations, animal studies and human clinical trials and endeavoured to integrate our results of MTT assay into current concepts of chemotherapy in benign meningiomas. Our results demonstrated that other chemotherapeutics with various mechanisms of action have the potential to be incorporated into second line therapy. Our study shows for the first time that chemosensitivity/resistance may be associated with histopathological variants of benign meningiomas.