Effects of sodium butyrate and dimethylsulfoxide on human pancreatic tumor cell lines.

The effects of 1 mM sodium butyrate or 2% dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) on three human pancreatic tumor cell lines were examined. The cell lines tested were MIA PaCa-2, PANC-1 and CAPAN-1. Both butyrate and DMSO inhibited the ability of all three lines to form colonies in soft agar. These results suggest that the use of these agents provides a model system for the study of the molecular changes involved in human pancreatic cancer. In butyrate all the cell lines showed a marked increase in cellular levels of alkaline phosphatase, while growth in DMSO led to a reduction in most cases. DMSO caused a rapid reduction in the attachment of all three cell lines to collagen substrates, while butyrate had no effect. These results illustrate the fact that although both butyrate and DMSO appear to greatly reduce the parameters correlated with tumorigenicity of human pancreatic cancer cells, the mechanisms involved may be very different.