SUM-44 Home

The SUM-44PE breast cancer cell line was the first line to be successfully established in the Ethier laboratory.  As the name suggests, the cell line was developed from a pleural effusion metastasis of a patient with metastatic breast cancer.  This cell line has a number of interesting features, including its identity as a lobular breast cancer cell with a pathognomonic mutation in the CDH1 (E-cadherin) gene.  The cells are also highly ER-alpha positive and the cells are dependent on ER-alpha for their growth and survival, as RNAi based knock-down of ESR1 results in rapid cell death.  These cells also harbor the important 8p11-p12 amplicon that contains several important driving oncogenes.

Okay, let’s delve more deeply into the SUM-44 cell line.
  1. The development of the SUM-44PE cell line, with patient characteristics
  2. Narrative summary of the SUM-44PE cells.
  3. Oncogenes and candidate oncogenes in SUM-44PE cells
  4. The KEGG canonical pathways enriched with data from our genome-scale shRNA screen
  5. The functional-druggable signature for SUM-44 cells
  6. Drug sensitivity data for SUM-44 cells
  7. Bibliography of published papers in which SUM-44 cells were used
  8. Comment on the SUM-44 cell line on the blog page

Back to the SUM cell line Gateway Page

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4 Comments on “SUM-44 Home”

  1. Hi, what do you mean by “Do not forget to add 2% FBS for the first 24 hours to cell lines grown in serum-free medium” – is this the first 24 hours after revival from cryopreservation, or the first 24 hours after (every?) TE split? Thanks.

    1. Hello and thanks for your comment. Since the media that we use to culture the SUM-44 cells with is serum-free, the cells do require some serum factors in order to re-attach to the plates after they have been split. So, whether you are thawing the cells from the freezer, or doing a routine split, add 2% serum to the medium for the first overnight to allow attachment, then switch back to serum-free medium. When taking the cells from the freezer, you may even want to use 5% FBS to maximize viability and attachment after freezing.

      I hope that answers your question. If not, please let me know.
      Steve Ethier

      1. Hi Steve,
        Interesting to read this comment. Usually we use 5% in all experiments and, as a reviewer, I don’t remember seeing people use the free-serum medium in the experiments but the ‘standard’ 5%.

        1. If you look back at our original publication of the SUM-44 cell line, you’ll see that we originally used a serum-free medium to develop this line. Indeed, we found it to often be true that human breast cancer cells do better without serum. Plus, our original goal in developing the SUM lines was to have each media formulation be as defined as possible, so many of our cell lines were originally grown in serum-free medium. Many of the lines can now be grown both in the presence or absence of serum, however, to get rid of the serum two things must happen. First, the serum has to be replaced with BSA, ethanolamine, transferrin, T3 and selenium. Second, when passaging the cells that had been growing in the absence of serum, 2% FBS (at least) must be added overnight to allow cell attachment.

          Thanks for you comment. I hope this is helpful.
          Steve Ethier

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