Objective: To establish a human cervical carcinoma cell line.
Methods: A primary culture was initiated from malignant tissue collected by dissection of cervical biopsy specimens. Characterizing cells in culture which included morphological observation, biological and karyotypic analysis, experimental tumorigenesis and the expression of p53, bcl-2 and Ki67 genes was carried out.
Results: The new established cervical carcinoma cell line (CS1213) had been maintained in culture for over 170 generations. The cells which were nonadherent had a common, rounded appearance with a cell cycle time of 25-hour and a 19 colony formation rate in soft agar. Electron micrographs demonstrated abundant tonofilaments in the cytoplasm. The karyotype showed a hyperdiploid feature with a main chromosome stem number ranged from 80 to 88. The culture was not contaminated by mycoplasma and had a distinct lactic acid dehydrogenase isozyme pattern. High expression level of p53 (31.9%), bcl-2 (89.3%) and Ki67 (33.7%) proteins was detected by flow cytometry. The xenogeneic tumors were grown in nude mice with the histological structure of the original one.
Conclusions: The novel CS1213 cells have the characteristics of human cervical squamous cells and could be used as an appropriate cellular model system for studying tumor invasion and metastasis.