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Isolation and characterization of an adriamycin-resistant breast tumor cell line

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Summary

An adriamycin-resistant human breast tumor cell line MDA-A1R was generated by step-wise selection in increasing concentrations of drug from the parent cell line MDA-MB-231. MDA-A1R cells grow as loosely attached cell aggregates with a doubling time of 28–32 h; the MDA-MB-231 parent cell line grows as a standard monolayer culture with a 20-h doubling time. The MDA-A1R cell line is highly resistant to adriamycin compared to the parent cell line, and is cross-resistant to velban and colchicine suggestive of a multidrug resistance (MDR) phenotype. MDA-A1R cells exhibit reduced net adriamycin conent as compared to the parent cell line. The MDR-associated P-glycoprotein gene is amplified approximately 10-to 30-fold in MDA-A1R cells. P-glycoprotein sequences are overexpressed in the resistant cells and are stable for up to 13 wk after drug removal. Moreover, MDA-A1R cells show the presence of very high levels of P-glycoprotein. MDA-A1R is thus an in vitro model system to study the mechanism of MDR in human breast cancer.

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This work was supported in part by grant C30195 from the National Institute of health, Bethesda, MD. Portion of this study appeared as a poster presentation at the Tissue Culture Association meeting, Las Vegas, 1988.

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Schneider, S.L., Fuqua, S.A.W., Speeg, K.V. et al. Isolation and characterization of an adriamycin-resistant breast tumor cell line. In Vitro Cell Dev Biol 26, 621–628 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02624212

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