název v anglickém jazyce není uveden

An in vitro cultivation technique has been developed that allows to reproducibly obtain and propagate a heterogenous population of epithelial cells from samples of normal mammary glands, breast tumours and subcutaneous metastases of breast cancer. The epithelial origin of cultured cells was proved by their cytokeratin profile, and EMA and ESA protein expression. The technique uses a feeder layer of irradiated NIH 3T3 cells to support clonal growth of even single isolated cells. Cultures were successfully established from 96% of surgical tumour biopsy specimens (69 out of 72, volume of sample about 1 cm3) and 67% of true-cut biopsy specimens (28 out of 42, volume 0.01 cm3). Two and more in vitro passages were obtained with 74% (53 out of 72) of surgical specimens and 31% (13 out of 42) of truecut biopsy specimens. This is the first report of successful in vitro propagation of cells obtained from breast cancer via true-cut biopsy. In cell populations analyzed for the growth properties, the culture lifetime, related to the number of colony-forming cells, varied for cells from benign tumours between 22 and 40 cell populations and for malignant tumours between 21 and 51. The population doubling time varied betwen 18 and 62 hours for benign cultures and 10 and 127 hours for malignant cultures, with average 32..