Invasiveness and ploidy of human mammary carcinomas in short-term culture

Invasiveness and ploidy were examined in cultures of human epithelial cells derived from nonmalignant breast tissue, primary breast carcinomas, and breast cancer effusion metastases. Successful short-term culture was achieved from approximately 70% of the primary breast cancers. These primary cancers were essentially diploid by flow cytometry and karyotype in contrast to the effusion metastases, which were mostly aneuploid. The diploid tumor cells retained their malignant phenotype in culture as demonstrated by invasion into a denuded human amnion basement membrane. In contrast, epithelial cells cultured from nonmalignant mammary tissue did not invade the amnion. We suggest that the diploid carcinoma cultures may be useful for investigating the essential differences between normal and malignant cells and may complement information derived from studies of tumor cell lines with grossly aberrant karyotypes.