1095 - Gene Expression Monitoring of the Swarm Rat Chondrosarcoma

Introduction: The Swarm rat chondrosarcoma is a model system for the study of chondrocyte metabolism and matrix synthesis, especially proteoglycans. Chondrocytes, when cultured in monolayer tend to dedifferentiate into fibroblasts over time, yet parallels are often drawn between in vitro monolayer culture and the in vivo state of cartilage, even though the cells are phenotypically different. A number of culture conditions have been developed that maintain chondrocyte phenotype: suspension culture, culturing in agarose or alginate beads, and supplementation of monolayer cultures with cytokines and growth factors known to maintain phenotype. In this study, we investigated two different culture conditions of the Swarm rat chondrosarcoma in short and long term culture, and compared RNA expression of the cultured cells to that of the expression pattern of freshy isolated tumor using high density oligonucleotide arrays.