Effects of Extensive Passaging on the Characteristics of Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma Cancer Cell Line HG008-T

Published

September 30, 2026

Author(s)

Zhiyong He, Jerilyn Izac, Alexander Gooden, Kenneth Cole, Andrew Liss, Justin Zook, Hua-Jun He

Abstract

Pancreatic cancer is one of the major causes of cancer death. Pancreatic cancer cell lines are important for drug and cancer treatment development. In a collaborative effort, we established a novel Cancer Genome-in-a-Bottle cell line HG008-T from a pancreatic cancer patient explicitly consented to make public extensive genomic data, which was recently published. The HG008-T cell line is publicly available at ATCC as CRL-3734. Characterizing a cell line before it is available from a public repository is critical to ensure scientific reliability, and reproducibility. The cell line has known somatic variants in KRAS, TP53, SMAD4, and CDKN2A genes, and was derived from a patient who received platinum neoadjuvant therapy. To complement the extensive genomic characterization published recently, in this study we characterized HG008-T over 80 passages by comparing early-passage cells with late-passage cells. The cells were found to proliferate faster after extensive passaging and lost heterogeneity in morphology. Following extensive passaging, an increased proportion of cells exhibited whole-genome doubling (WGD), which may reflect the selective expansion of WGD clones due to enhanced proliferative capacity and/or de novo genome doubling events occurring in non-WGD cells during prolonged culture. The late-passage cells exhibited increased anchorage-independent growth. No significant surface marker expression alteration was observed. However, following approximately 80 passages, heterogeneous alterations in marker gene expression were observed. The late-passage cells were more sensitive to cisplatin but exhibited a modest shift in sensitivity to the CDK4/6 inhibitor palbociclib. In conclusion, extensive passaging altered certain characteristics of HG008-T cells, therefore, passage history should be indicated in future studies using HG008-T cell line as a cancer cell model.

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Cells

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Keywords

Pancreatic cancer, pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), extensive passaging, STR typing, karyotyping, drug sensitivity, tumorigenicity.

Citation

He, Z. , Izac, J. , Gooden, A. , Cole, K. , Liss, A. , Zook, J. and He, H. (2026), Effects of Extensive Passaging on the Characteristics of Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma Cancer Cell Line HG008-T, Cells, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=960468 (Accessed October 3, 2026)

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