We have established new human sarcoma lines and examined their sensitivity to common antitumor drugs and expression of putative multidrug resistance (MDR) proteins. Eighty-two sarcoma samples were transplanted in nude mice. Fourteen of these sarcomas were established as tumor cell lines. We determined a chemosensitivity profile to antitumor drugs (MDR drugs = doxorubicin, mitoxantrone, and vincristine; non-MDR drugs = cisplatin, ifosfamide, and bleomycin) for each tumor line in vivo. Response to chemotherapy with doxorubicin and ifosfamide was observed in 30-50% of these tumor lines. Our results obtained with xenotransplants are similar to the results documented in clinical trials in which doxorubicin and ifosfamide are effective in 30-50% of the patients. Furthermore, we examined expression of MDR-relevant markers like P-glycoprotein, MDR-associated protein, lung resistance protein, and mdr1 mRNA in these xenotransplants. A relationship between mdr1 mRNA expression and response to doxorubicin was demonstrated in >90% of our tumor lines. In six sarcomas with mdr1 mRNA expression, five were resistant against doxorubicin and cross-resistant against several other drugs, whereas from eight sarcomas, which lacked detectable mdr1 mRNA, seven were sensitive to doxorubicin and other drugs. We found lung resistance protein or MDR-associated protein expressed in three resistant and mdr1 mRNA-positive sarcomas. These results demonstrate that mdr1 mRNA expression is a putative marker for drug resistance in our sarcoma lines. We conclude, therefore, that inherent P-glycoprotein expression might be also responsible for drug resistance occurring in treatment of patients with sarcomas. The established tumor lines are useful for additional investigations on mechanisms of drug resistance in sarcomas and as models for preclinical screening of new antitumor drugs.