Explant culture of sarcoma patients' tissue.

Human sarcomas comprise a heterogeneous group of rare tumors that affect soft tissues and bone. Due to the scarcity and heterogeneity of these diseases, patient-derived cells that can be used for preclinical research are limited. In this study, we investigated whether the tissue explant technique can be used to obtain sarcoma cell lines from fresh as well as viable frozen tissue obtained from 8 out of 12 soft tissue and 9 out of 13 bone tumor entities as defined by the World Health Organization.

Expression of Melan-A/MART-1 in primary melanoma cell cultures has prognostic implication in metastatic melanoma patients.

The lack of melanoma-associated antigen (MAA) expression has been associated with the reduced overall survival in melanoma patients. In order to investigate whether the MAA expression detected on cell cultures established from melanoma patients might relate to the overall survival in these patients, we screened primary cell cultures derived from 37 melanoma metastases for the expression of five known MAA: Melan-A, tyrosinase, gp-100, MAGE-1 and MAGE-3 by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS). MAA expression detected by PCR was found at a high percentage in evaluated melanoma cell lines: 25 of 28 (89%) were positive for Melan-A, 22 of 28 (79%) were positive for tyrosinase, 26 of 28 (93%) were positive for gp-100, and 18 of 28 (64%) were positive for MAGE-3 expression.