IMMORTALIZED AND TUMORIGENIC ADULT HUMAN PROSTATIC EPITHELIAL-CELL LINES - CHARACTERISTICS AND APPLICATIONS .1. CELL MARKERS AND IMMORTALIZED NONTUMORIGENIC CELL-LINES

Several immortalized and malignant adult human prostatic epithelial ce ll lines have recently been developed. The three most widely used carc inoma cell lines, DU-145, PC-3, and LNCaP, developed between 1977 and 1980, have greatly contributed to our present understanding of prostat e cancer. Before a cell line can be accepted as having prostatic epith elial origin, some basic characteristics must be established. Expressi on of specific cytokeratins, but absence of desmin and factor VIII, sh ould be first determined to establish epithelial origin. Responsivenes s to androgens and expression of androgen receptor and prostate specif ic antigen should be examined under stringent culture conditions to es tablish prostatic epithelial origin. Response to growth factors and ex pression of their receptors facilitates further characterization of ce ll behavior. Cell lines immortalized by human papillomaviruses (HPVs) are of special interest because HPVs are involved in a variety of anog enital cancers and may also play a role in prostate carcinogenesis. Ma lignant transformation of HPV-18 immortalized cells with the ras oncog ene provides cell systems for investigating the multistep process of c arcinogenesis. Each cell line has some unique characteristics, whether it arose directly from a carcinoma or resulted from immortalization w ith simian virus 40 (SV40) or HPV or was transformed in vitro by oncog enes. Comparisons of these characteristics should facilitate elucidati on of the mechanisms involved in initiation, promotion, and progressio n of prostate cancer. These cell lines will further serve as useful mo dels for investigating tumor progression, invasion, metastasis, new th erapeutic strategies, drug resistance, and its reversal and chemopreve ntion. This review will be published in three parts and will summarize cell markers necessary for characterization, as well as the character istics and some applications of the immortalized as well as malignant adult human prostatic epithelial cell lines. Part 1 deals with cell ma rkers and the immortalized, nontumorigenic cell lines. (C) 1996 Wiley- Liss, Inc.