Establishment and characterization of a new intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma cell line derived from a Chinese patient

Patients with intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC) require chemotherapy due to late detection, rapid disease progression, and low surgical resection rate. Tumor cell lines are extremely important in cancer research for drug discovery and development. Here, we established and characterized a new intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma cell line, ICC-X1. STR testing confirmed the absence of cross-contamination and high similarity to the original tissue. ICC-X1 exhibited typical epithelial morphology and formed tumor spheres in the suspension culture. The population doubling time was approximately 48 h. The cell line had a complex hypotriploid karyotype. The cell line exhibited a strong migration ability in vitro and cell inoculation into BALB/c nude mice led to the formation of xenografts. Additionally, ICC-X1 cells were sensitive to gemcitabine and paclitaxel but resistant to 5-fluorouracil and oxaliplatin. RNA sequencing revealed that the upregulated cancer-related genes were mainly enriched in several signaling pathways, including the TNF signaling pathway, NOD-like receptor signaling pathway, and NF-κB signaling pathway. The downregulated cancer-related genes were mainly enriched in the Rap1 signaling pathway and Hippo signaling pathway among other pathways. In conclusion, we have created a new ICC cell line derived from Chinese patients. This cell line can be used as a preclinical model to study ICC, specifically tumor metastasis and drug resistance mechanisms.