Optimal Factors that Influence the Establishment of Successful Primary Human Soft Tissue Sarcoma Cell Lines

Development of improved therapies is complicated by the limited availability of well-characterized human models, especially in rare tumors such as soft tissue sarcoma (STS). This study aimed to address this need by reporting on the optimization of conditions and clinical factors that correlate with successful establishment of primary STS cell lines. We focused on leiomyosarcoma (LMS), myxofibrosarcoma (MFS), and undifferentiated pleomorphic sarcoma (UPS), all of which are adult STS with complex genomics and poor survival rates.We initiated cell lines from 165 fresh STS specimens. Cultures were classified as: 1) no/little in vitro growth or 2) persistent growth. Tumor and clinical characteristics were analyzed to determine their correlation with cell line growth. To determine whether cell lines shared tumor-specific variations (TSVs) and mutational signatures with bulk specimens, comparative and COSMIC mutational signature analyses were performed on a subset of UPS cases with cell line, tumor and blood DNAs available (n=5 cases). The whole exome sequencing data from blood, primary bulk specimens and cell line DNA samples have been made available here.