Establishment of a Chinese bladder cancer cell line (T921) with high metastatic activity

Muscle-invasive bladder cancer is prone to metastasis without a standard organ preference. The current cell lines used to study bladder cancer have primarily been derived from individuals in Western populations, and no human bladder cancer cell line has been established from the Chinese population. A bladder cancer cell line was derived from a female Chinese patient with muscle-invasive bladder cancer, and these cells were then xenografted into the bladders of three nude mice. Five weeks later, these mice were killed to observe local invasion and distant metastasis. The metastatic tumors were also removed and analyzed to assess the metastatic mechanism. This bladder cancer cell line, named T921, was successfully established, as evidenced by karyotype and immunohistochemistry analyses. Multi-organ metastases were observed in all three of the nude mice 5 wk after the orthotopic transfer of the cell line. In addition, epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT)-related genes were involved in the tumor metastases. The T921 bladder cancer cell line was successfully established, and EMT was observed to play a role in bladder cancer metastasis.