Establishment and characterization of three new human breast cancer cell lines derived from Chinese breast cancer tissues.

Background: Breast cancer is a major malignancy affecting females worldwide. It is the most common cause of death from cancer in women. Cell lines are widely used in laboratory research and particularly as in vitro models in cancer research. But we found that the routinely used breast cancer cell lines were mostly derived from Caucasians or African-Americans. There were few standard models to study the pathogenic mechanism at molecular level and cell signaling pathway of breast cancer for Asian patients. It is quite necessary to establish new breast cancer cell lines from xanthoderm to study the pathogenic mechanism and therapeutic methods.

Results: Three new breast cancer cell lines, designated BC-019, BC-020 and BC-021, were successfully established and characterized from breast invasive ductal carcinoma tissues of three Chinese female patients. These new cell lines growing as adherent monolayer with characteristic epithelial morphology could be maintained continuously in vitro, and they were ER-, PR- and C-erbB-2-positive. Their chromosomes showed high hyperdiploidy and complex rearrangements, and they displayed aggressive tumorigencity in tumorigenesis test.

Conclusion: The three newly established breast cancer cell lines from Chinese patients were tested for a number of, and the results indicate that the cell lines were in good quality and could be served as new cell models in breast cancer study.