We established four renal cell carcinoma (RCC) cell lines (HANKS), namely the primary tumor (HANKS-Pr), metastasized to the lung (HANKS-Lu), liver (HANKS-Li) and lymph node (HANKS-LN) derived from a patient with advanced RCC, and analyzed their characters. Each had an epithelial morphology and exhibited multilayering. These cell lines have been maintained for more than 36 months and over 100 in vitro passages. In karyotype analysis, the common aberration in the four cell lines was marker chromosome t(3;18)(p13;q21). In soft agar culture, HANKS-Pr showed the lowest growth. Furthermore, we found high level expression of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I antigen on HANKS-Pr and HANKS-Lu, and low expression of MHC class II antigen on four cell lines. HANKS-LN had transplantability in nude mice.
We determined the different biological properties among HANKS cell lines stemming from the same origin.