Establishment and characterization of a novel, spontaneously immortalized retinoblastoma cell line with adherent growth.

Retinoblastoma is the most common intraocular cancer of childhood, however, only a few cultured retinoblastoma cell lines are available to date. In the present study, we established a new human retinoblastoma cell line with adherent growth, named SNUOT-Rb1. The SNUOT-Rb1 cell line was established from an eye with retinoblastoma, which was enucleated from a 3-year-old Korean child. SNUOT-Rb1 has morphological and biochemical characteristics common to previous human retinoblastoma cell line, Y79: morphological features of fibroblast- or ganglion-like cells, and biochemical features of expression of glial fibrillary acidic protein and neuron-specific enolase. However, compared to Y79, SNUOT-Rb1 has a unique characteristic of growing in adherence, and the doubling time of SNUOT-Rb1 is shorter than Y79 in adherent or floating growth. In analysis of the tumorigenic potential of SNUOT-Rb1 in nude mice, orthotopic implantation of SNUOT-Rb1 mimics the pattern of local growth of retinoblastoma. In comparative genomic hybridization analysis, we found that SNUOT-Rb1 has significant chromosomal imbalances on chromosome 3, 9, 10, 11, 14, 16, 17, and 22. Therefore, SNUOT-Rb1 could be useful in studying the biological and genetic characteristics of retinoblastoma for insights into the heredity and genetics of childhood cancer.