Xenografting of human pleural mesotheliomas to athymic rats and mice.

We xenografted cells from eight human pleural mesotheliomas to athymic rats and from one tumour to athymic mice. Four of the tumours grew for one or more passages in rats. Two of the tumours could be serially long-term passaged in athymic animals over a period of 33 months for 27 passages and 41 months for 18 passages, respectively. The growth rates of the two long-term transplantable tumours increased during the initial passages, after which the tumour-volume doubling time remained 3-5 days. Only one of the nine transplanted mesotheliomas exhibited growth characteristics suitable for drug-testing experiments.