Morphologic and biochemical variability of tissue and cultured cells from human pheochromocytoma.

Primary cell cultures from 18 human pheochromocytomas were maintained in culture for 10 to 12 days and characterized. The cell yields ranged from 1.0 to 60.1 X 10(6) cells/g wet weight of tissue. Cell size, as determined by histofluorescent microscopy, varied as much as seven-fold among cells derived from a given tumor and ten-fold between cells from all tumors. Cell catecholamine content, norepinephrine (NE) plus epinephrine, ranged from 0.4 to 89.5 nmol/10(6) cells at day 5 in culture and did not correlate with catecholamine content of the tissue from which the cells were obtained. Cell catecholamine content decreased with time in culture, but this decrease could not be related to a change in cell viability, the type of media used, an inability to convert dopamine to NE, or an alteration in the uptake of 3H-NE. Cellular uptake of 1.0 microM 3H-NE varied as much as 230-fold between all cell dispersions. The basal and acetylcholine stimulated release of both preloaded 3H-NE and the endogenous catecholamines was quite variable. There was no correlation between the release rate, either basal or stimulated, of preloaded 3H-NE and the endogenous catecholamines. This study represents the largest existing data base on culturing cells from these tumors and describes many of the morphologic and biochemical characteristics of this cell system.