Endocrine Abstracts

Adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC) is a rare malignancy with heterogeneous but dismal prognosis and despite numerous efforts to improve patient care, effective treatment options are still lacking. ACC in vitro research faces for decades one major obstacle - the unavailability of different ACC cell line models. Here, we present a newly established human ACC cell line that was directly transferred to and now proliferates in cell culture. JIL-O cell line was derived from a primary adrenal tumor of a female, fifty-year-old patient with ENSAT stage IV. The patient presented with clinical symptoms of hypercortisolism and androgen excess and was treatment-naïve at the time of surgery. Subsequently, she received palliative mitotane and cytotoxic chemotherapy. Short tandem repeat (STR) profiling confirmed matches between the tumour and the derived cell line. Both tumour tissue and JIL-O cells were exome sequenced and a hemizygous TP53 mutation (NM_000546.5: c.859G>T: p.Glu287*) in the cell line excluded contamination with healthy cells. JIL-O cells stained positive for steroidogenic factor 1 (SF-1) by western blot. Hormone profile panels were determined by LC-MS/MS and those of the cell line matched to the secretion of the tumour in the patient, withexcessive secretion of cortisol, 11-deoxycortisol and androgens (androstendione, DHEA, testosterone). JIL-O cells adhere on plastic and started to proliferate after being in cell culture for more than one year with a doubling time of approximately 39 hours. To our knowledge, this is the first ACC cell line since the establishment of the NCI-H295R cell line that was directly transferred into in vitro culture without implantation into mice. JIL-O cells hence present another new tool to study ACC in vitro and hopefully help to reflect heterogeneity of this rare malignancy.