Human pancreatic carcinoma (mia paca‐2) in continuous culture: Sensitivity to asparaginase

Abstract An undifferentiated human pancreatic carcinoma has been established in continuous culture and is grown in Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium fortified with 10% fetal calf serum and 2.5% horse serum. The established cell line (MIA PaCa‐2) has a doulbing time of 40 h. The cells are large with abundant cytoplasm, exhibit a high degree of aneuploidy and have a tendency to grow on top of other cells. MIA PaCa‐2 grows in soft agar with a colony‐forming efficiency of 19%. Both MIA PaCa‐2 cells and a cell line from another pancreatic carcinoma obtained from National Cancer Institute (NCI) are sensitive to asparaginase, a property not shared by several other human tumor cell lines tested.