Establishment and characterization of a pancreatic carcinoma cell line derived from malignant pleural effusion.
BACKGROUND/AIMS: A novel cell line, designated p34, was developed from the malignant pleural effusion of a patient with carcinoma of pancreas. The objective of this work was to characterize this cell line. METHOD: The in vitro studies included karyotype analysis, immunohistochemistry, XTT cell proliferation assay, analysis of the cell cycle by FACS and cell sensitivity to chemotherapeutic drugs and irradiation. Subcutaneous and intra-spleen inoculations into nude mice were carried out to study the tumorigenicity and the metastatic tendency of this cell line. RESULTS: The p34 cell line showed typical morphological characteristics of epithelial pancreatic tumor cells. The cells were hyperdiploid with a modal number of 48, and had two markers, deletion in the short arm of chromosome 2 and duplication of the short arm of chromosome 8. The doubling time was 16 h. Subcutaneous inoculation of the cells into nude mice yielded 100% tumorigenicity, and intra-spleen inoculation resulted in extensive intra-abdominal spread. The antiproliferative effect of chemotherapy (gemcitabine, cisplatin, taxol and vinorelbine), chemopreventive agents (celecoxib and curcumin) and radiotherapy showed dose-dependent cytotoxicity. CONCLUSIONS: This p34 cell line can be used as a new model for studying various aspects of the biology of human pancreatic cancer and potential treatment approaches for the disease.