Establishment and characterization of a new squamous cell carcinoma cell line, TMUU-08, derived from human bladder cancer

Human squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) of the bladder is a rare malignancy that represents less than 5% of bladder tumors. In contrast to non-bilharzial SCC, bilharzial SCC is a distinct pathological disease that is rarely encountered in Japan. The majority of patients with non-bilharzial SCC present with a poorly differentiated, muscle-invasive tumor with no previous episode of urothelial carcinoma (UC). Even in the absence of distant metastases, the prognosis of patients with non-bilharzial SCC of the bladder remains dismal because patients die of localized recurrence. This is in contrast to UC in which distant metastasis accounts for the great majority of recurrence. The 5-year survival rate of the patients treated for non-bilharzial SCC of the bladder was only about 10%. To date, large numbers of reports have examined the establishment of a human bladder cancer cell line with UC. However, few reports exist regarding the establishment of the human bladder cancer cell line with SCC. In the present study, we established a new cell line (TMUU-08) from the metastatic lymph node of a patient with SCC of the bladder. The TMUU-08 cell line of human bladder SCC was characterized. These results indicate that TMUU-08 cells might be useful in basic studies not only in the treatment but also etiology of human bladder SCC.