Establishment, characterisation and partial cytokine expression profile ofa new human osteosarcoma cell line (CAL 72)

Permanent human osteosarcoma cell lines are important tools for the study o f bone cancer. As representative of an osteoblastic phenotype, they partly reflect their normal osteoblastic counterparts and, thus, may represent app ropriate models to investigate the mechanisms involved in bone remodelling and in haematopoietic differentiation. In the present work, we describe a n ew human cell line, CAL 72, obtained from an osteosarcoma of the knee of a 10-year-old boy. These cells grow in continuous culture, and karyotypic ana lysis has revealed clonal abnormalities in number and structure, especially loss of chromosome Y. These cells exhibit morphological, immuno-histochemi cal and molecular characteristics of the osteoblastic lineage. Using RT-PCR , we have shown that the CAL 72 cell line expresses high levels of mRNA cod ing for several cytokines, such as G-CSF, GM-CSF, IL-1 beta and IL-6. In vi ew of this expression profile, the CAL 72 phenotype appears to be closer to normal primary osteoblasts than other reported osteosarcomas. Moreover, th ese cells express mRNA for both HGF and its receptor c-MET, suggesting that this autocrine loop might contribute to the invasiveness of the tumour fro m which CAL (C) 1999 Wiley-Liss, Inc.