One patient - Two primary and two metastatic cell lines with distinct phenotypes

[R.B.]

!!!!!


4 different ErbB2 (Her 2) lines with distinct morphology and growth requirment factors in ONE PATIENT it says.

How wide spread is this.

What are the treatment implications.

Yet another indication that there are good reasons for caution as to the time it will take to find a cure.

I continue to argue that surely it will be easier to try and identify causes and remove those in the shorter term, thereby at least removing a significant number of cases, than have any expectation of "cure".

The medical industry need not worry - they will not be out of a job - as expectations change and increase the emphasis will just shift a bit somewhere else.

RB


http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/cg...e2=tf_ipsecsha

Cancer Research, Vol 50, Issue 22 7351-7357, Copyright © 1990 by American Association for Cancer Research

ARTICLES
Tumor progression in four mammary epithelial cell lines derived from the same patient

V Band, D Zajchowski, K Swisshelm, D Trask, V Kulesa, C Cohen, J Connolly and R Sager
Division of Cancer Genetics, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, Massachusetts.

Two primary and two metastatic cell lines with distinct phenotypes and genotypes have been established from a patient diagnosed as having infiltrating and intraductal mammary carcinoma (21T series). All four lines can be cultured in the same medium, DFCI-1, which also supports long-term growth of normal epithelial cells. Therefore, we have been able to compare normal and tumor cells at the cellular and molecular levels. The mammary origin of the 21T series was confirmed by using antibodies against the human milk fat globule antigen-2 epitope. The two primary tumor lines (21NT and 21PT) are both immortal and aneuploid, although only 21NT is tumorigenic in the nude mouse assay. The two populations derived from the metastatic pleural effusion (21MT-1 and 21MT-2) each exhibit distinct characteristics in morphology and growth factor requirements. The erbB2 gene is amplified and overexpressed in all of these cell lines compared to normal epithelial cell controls. These four tumor cell lines from a single patient represent a mammary tumor progression series that has been established in long-term cell culture.