Tissue culture of benign and malignant human prostatic tumors. I. Morphological observation on cultured cells (author's transl)

Abstract

Prostatic tissues from 34 patients who were suspected to suffer from prostatic cancer were obtained by either rectal or perineal needle biopsy. The tissues were minced into small explants and were placed in T-D 15 flasks and were immersed in a culture medium consisting of Eagle's MEM supplemented with 10% calf serum or bovine serum and were placed in an incubator at 37°C. Outgrowth of monolayer cells was observed morphologically by means of an inverted phase-contrast microscope and photographed. Some tissues were fixed and stained for histopathological observation.Histopathological diagnosises of 34 cases were benign prostatic hypertrophy in 14 cases prostatic adenocarcinoma in 16 cases, suspected carcinoma in 2 cases, reticulum cell sarcoma in 1 case and chronic prostatitis in 1 case.As the results of tissue culture, 4 cases of benign hypertrophy, 11 cases of prostatic adenocarcinoma and 1 case of reticulum cell sarcoma formed monolayer cell sheet over 2 weeks. Therefore, the successful rate was statistically higher in prostatic carcinoma (68.8%) than in hypertrophy (28.6%).In phase contrast microscopy, both the polygonal epithelial cells and the spindle-shaped fibroblastic cells were observed in all the cases of benign prostatic hypertrophy. On the contrary, epithelial cells were dominant in 6 cases of prostatic adenocarcinoma while both the epithelial and the fibroblastic cells were equivalent in other 5 cases of adenocarcinoma. The rate of appearance of the epithelial cells tended to be higher in the adenocarcinoma than in the hypertrophy. All cells in reticulum cell sarcoma were epithelial cells.Although no established cell line was obtained due to infection, many cell strains were obtained from both the biopsied tissues of benign prostatic hypertrophy and prostatic adenocarcinoma, which were maintained in vitro for more than 2 weeks. These cell strains can be used as the experimental models to study the effects of sex hormones upon the prostatic cells.