Establishment and characterization of a human cholangiocarcinoma cell line

Cholangiocarcinoma (CC) is a rare malignant tumor arising from the biliary tract. The disease is notoriously difficult to diagnose and is usually fatal due to its late clinical presentation and the lack of effective non-surgical therapeutic strategies. To date, little is known about the cancer biology of the disease and the establishment and characterization of only a few CC cell lines have been reported. We report here the establishment of a new human cancer cell line, HKGZ-CC, from a moderate to poorly differentiated intrahepatic bile duct carcinoma from a Chinese patient. Morphological characteristics, growth kinetics, ability to grow on anchorage-independent soft agar, tumorigenicity in nude mice and cytogenetic features of the cell line were investigated. Chromosome banding karyotype and comparative genomic hybridization analyses revealed chromosomal changes in 1pter-p31, 1q31-qter, 3q, 8q21-qter, 9pter-9q34, 10, 13q21-qter and X. This newly established cell line should serve as a useful model for studying the molecular pathogenesis of CC.