Establishment of a human squamous cell carcinoma cell line of the upper aero-digestive tract.

A human squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) cell line has been established from the surgical specimen of an untreated, upper aero-digestive tract tumour, diagnosed as a squamous carcinoma, grade III, of the pyriform fossa. The tumour tissue was grown as a xenograft in an athymic nude mouse and was designated as NT-8. Histological examination of the surgical specimen and the nude mouse tumour showed that the two were identical. NT-8 was subsequently passed by subcutaneous injections into nude mice. After the 6th passage in nude mouse, the tumour was cultured in vitro where it grew as an epithelial cell line, with a typical cobblestone appearance. This cell line was designated as NT-8e. Both the primary tumour as well as xenograft and the cells in culture have retained several common morphological and biochemical characteristics. Immunological markers for epithelial cells including epithelial membrane antigen and cytokeratins were seen in all three, confirming the epithelial lineage. Characterization of the NT-8e cell line including growth parameters, anchorage-independent growth and tumorigenicity in nude mice, chromosome counts and DNA content by flow cytometry have been carried out.