The effect of wild type P53 gene transfer on growth properties and tumorigenicity of PANC-1 tumor cell line.

Background: The p53 protein function is essential for the maintenance of the nontumorigenic cell phenotype. Pancreatic tumor cells show a very high frequency of p53 mutation. To determine if restoration of wild type p53 function can be used to eliminate the tumorigenic phenotype in these cells, pancreatic tumor cell lines, PANC-1 and HTB80, differing in p53 status were stably transfected with exogenous wild type p53 gene.