Epidermal growth factor stimulation and metastatic rate in human pancreatic carcinoma cell lines

Pancreatic carcinoma is usually a fatal disease with most patients dying of metastases. We have developed several pancreatic carcinoma cell lines that have varying metastatic abilities in a splenic injection/liver metastasis model. Epidermal growth factor (EGF) is a mitogen to most cell types with increased levels of EGF receptor. The parent cell line (COLO-357) of the pancreatic carcinoma cell lines used in this study has been shown to have a high number of EGF receptors per cell. We studied the relationship between the mitogenic responsiveness to EGF and the metastatic rate of each of the cell lines. Three of the six cell lines were significantly stimulated by EGF as determined by an increase in cell number over the course of 4 days, and three of the cell lines were not. There was no correlation between metastatic rate and EGF responsiveness. Further work will be needed to determine if there is any relationship between growth factors and their receptors and tumor metastasis with these pancreatic cancer cell lines.