The characteristics of nasopharyngeal carcinoma cell strain against chemotherapeutic agents and cytokines

Abstract

The closed relationship between nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) and Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) has been pointed out. However, it still remains unclear whether the EBV becomes a true factor in initiation and promotion in NPC or not, because of difficulty to establish this cancer strain. We succeeded to establish the EBV-genome positive cell line (NPC-TY861) in 1986, which had been derived from the tissues of nasopharyngeal carcinoma. In this study, the characteristics of this cell strain were investigated by tests for sensitivity against several kinds of anticancerous agents and immuno-activated cells. The sensitivity tests revealed that NPC-TY861 cell line was extremely sensitive to PEP, ADR, VCR, LPA and CDDP with dose dependent manner. Fruthermore, this cell strain had similar sensitivity to CDDP derivatives, such as 254-S, NK121, DWA2114R and CBDCA as KB cell strain did, which had been derived from an oral base cancer. The oral base cancer was a poorly differenciated squamous cell carcinoma histopathologically as same as NPC-TY861 cell strain. On the other hand, NPC-TY861 cell strain showed no sensitivity to cytckines, TNF and IFN, Which have direct anti-cancerous actions. NPC-TY861 cell strain had resistant to NK cells and much more resistant to LAK cells derived from IL-2 than Daudi cell strain did. In order to elucidate the oncogeneous mechanism in NPC, it is indispensable to study the character of this cell strain and it would promise to get a new effective therapeutic method for the patient with NPC, who has bad prognosis. © 1991, The Oto-Rhino-Laryngological Society of Japan, Inc. All rights reserved.