The establishment and characteristics of a glioma cell line (KMU100) with a long term culture.

In this study, we describe the biological characteristics and cellular kinetics (analyzed by flow cytometry) of a human glioblastoma cell line (KMU100) which had been successively maintained for 10 years. The observation GFAP (glial fibrillary acidic protein)-positive cultured cells were still noted after 275 successive passages in KMU100. GFAP stains, even though weaker, was still observed beyond the 275th passage. The doubling time was found to be 15 hours at the 490th passage. The modal chromosome number was 71, and showed a high triploid pattern. Analysis of DNA histogram by flow cytometry revealed that the cellular proliferative activity was higher in the cells belonging to the cultured cell line than in the original tumor cells from which the cell line was derived.