OBJECTIVE: To understand the relation between cytotoxic activity of immunologic effector cells and multidrug resistance of the tumor cells. METHODS: Continuous observation of the morphological changes and MTT colorimetry were employed to evaluate the cytotoxic activity of lymphokine-activated killer (LAK) cells and natural killer (NK) cells against multidrug-resistant (MDR) human oral carcinoma cell line-KBV200 (before and after reversal of MDR) and parental drug-sensitive cell line KB. The morphologic changes of LAK cells and the 3 target cell lines were observed continuously under inverted microscope 3 h after co-culture of LAK cells with one of three target cell lines respectively. The lysis rates of three tumor cell lines in response to co-culture with LAK or NK cells were determined using MTT colorimetry. RESULTS: In comparison with the parental drug-sensitive cell line KB, both KBV200 and its reserved cell line by verapamil (KBVV) showed earlier adherence and greater number of cells lysed by LAK. In MTT colorimetry assay, the cytotoxicity of both LAK and NK cells against the 3 cell lines was associated with the effector-to-target (E/T) cell ratio; the lysis rates of KBV200 and reversed KBV200 cells by verapamil in response to LAK and NK cells were higher than that of KB cells (P<0.05), but KBV200 and KBVV did not significantly differ (P>0.05). At the same E/T ratio, LAK cells possessed stronger cytotoxicity than NK cells against all the tumor cell lines (P<0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Immunologic effector cells possess strong cytotoxic activity against multidrug-resistant cell line KBV200. Modulation of MDR does not decrease the cytotoxic activity of the immunologic effector cells. The results of this study suggest that adoptive cell immunotherapy with immunologic effector cells may be of value in controlling the progress of MDR tumors.