Presence of Glycogen and Growth-related Variations in 58 Cultured Human Tumor Cell Lines of Various Tissue Origins1

The present study was undertaken to investigate whether the unusual accumulation of glycogen and its relationship to the process of cell growth, already shown in human colon tumor cell lines, also applied to malignant cell lines originating from other tissues. The glycogen content was measured during the exponential phase of growth in culture of 58 human tumor cell lines, most of them originating from tissues with low gly cogen storage. Glycogen was present in all the cell lines at concentrations which varied from one cell line to another. Particularly high values, ranging from 90 to 370 ¿tg of glycogen per mg of protein, were found in the cell lines Cama-1 (breast); A-498 and SW-839 (kidney); SK-MEL-24, MeWo, and Malme3M (melanomas); SK-UT-1 (uterus); VM-CUB-3 and RT-4 (uri nary bladder); U-87 MG (glioblastoma); and SK-OV-3 (ovary). These values were higher than those found in the cell lines SKHEP-1 (liver) and JEG-3 (choriocarcinoma) and those found in 4 of 5 cervix lines taken as control tumor lines originating from glycogen-rich tissues. The kinetics of glycogen storage in relation to the process of cell growth was studied in 5 cell lines originating from a melanoma (MeWo) and from carcinomas of the lung (SW-900), ovary (SK-OV-3), urinary bladder (RT-4), and kidney (SW-839). The same pattern of growth-related variations of the glycogen content was found as that in colon carcinoma cells; namely, a plateau of basal value during the exponential phase was followed by a regular increase of the glycogen content, starting with the decrease in the rate of cell division and reaching maximum values when the cells came into arrest of growth. The maximum values found in SW-900, RT-4, SK-OV-3, MeWo, and SW-839 cells were, respectively, 140 ±5 (S.D.), 714 ±42, 804 ±40, 1070 ±69, and 1206 ±84 jug of glycogen per mg of protein. These cells should provide ideal material for further studies on the involvement of glycogen metabolism in both the neoplastic process and the process of malignant cell growth.