Oncogenic mutation profiling in new lung cancer and mesothelioma cell lines

BACKGROUND: Thoracic tumor, especially lung cancer, ranks as the top cancer mortality in most parts of the world. Lung adenocarcinoma is the predominant subtype and there is increasing knowledge on therapeutic molecular targets, namely EGFR, ALK, KRAS, and ROS1, among lung cancers. Lung cancer cell lines established with known clinical characteristics and molecular profiling of oncogenic targets like ALK or KRAS could be useful tools for understanding the biology of known molecular targets as well as for drug testing and screening. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Five new cancer cell lines were established from pleural fluid or biopsy tissues obtained from Chinese patients with primary lung adenocarcinomas or malignant pleural mesothelioma. They were characterized by immunohistochemistry, growth kinetics, tests for tumorigenicity, EGFR and KRAS gene mutations, ALK gene rearrangement and OncoSeq mutation profiling. RESULTS: These newly established lung adenocarcinoma and mesothelioma cell lines were maintained for over 100 passages and demonstrated morphological and immunohistochemical features as well as growth kinetics of tumor cell lines. One of these new cell lines bears EML4-ALK rearrangement variant 2, two lung cancer cell lines bear different KRAS mutations at codon 12, and known single nucleotide polymorphism variants were identified in these cell lines. DISCUSSION: Four new lung adenocarcinoma and one mesothelioma cell lines were established from patients with different clinical characteristics and oncogenic mutation profiles. These characterized cell lines and their mutation profiles will provide resources for exploration of lung cancer and mesothelioma biology with regard to the presence of known oncogenic mutations.