Establishment and characterization of human pancreatic adenocarcinoma cell line in tissue culture and the nude mouse.

We established a human pancreatic carcinoma cell line, designated SPH, from cancerous ascites of a 57-year-old male patient with ductal adenocarcinoma of the pancreas. The cells have been cultured for 32 months with RPMI-1640 medium supplemental with 10% fetal calf serum. The population doubling time of this cell line was about 35 h, and the modal number of chromosomes was 85 at passage 20. The cells produced CA19-9, SPan-1, and DUPAN-2 in the conditioned medium and formed tumors in nude mice, the histology of which was similar to that of the primary tumor. Based on these findings, this cell line is considered to be a very useful model for studying many aspects of primary and metastatic pancreatic cancer cell biology.