Chordomas are rare, slowly developing tumors with high medical need, arising in the axial skeleton from notochord remnants. line provides a useful tool for the identification of drugs active in chordoma. Introduction Chordomas are malignant bone tumors that arise along any region of the axial skeleton, more frequently at sacro-coccygeal or skull-base ends1, 2. They are rare tumors, accounting for 1C4% of bone cancers, that occur more frequently in males than females and have a peak buy 103909-75-7 of incidence at around 60 years of age, although adolescents and children can also be affected3. Despite being slow progressing, chordomas are locally aggressive and invasive, and can also spread distally generating metastases in soft tissues, liver, lung, lymph-nodes and skin1, 2. No therapeutic options have so far revealed to be efficacious for this indication, which is highly resistant to conventional chemotherapy, and consequently no approved standard of care exists. Extensive surgery and/or high dose radiotherapy is currently used to treat the disease, but tumor location, frequently close to cranial or lombo-sacral nerves and blood vessels, makes the achievement of negative surgical margins very challenging3C5. In most cases local relapses occur and represent the main cause of death buy 103909-75-7 for patients6, 7. Chordomas therefore retain a strong unmet medical need, and new efficacious therapies are urgently needed. Chordomas are thought to originate from remnants of the notochord, a transient structure required for patterning buy 103909-75-7 the surrounding tissues in all chordate embryos, that disappears later in development and is absent in adults. Among other developmental signals, notochordal cells express the transcription factor brachyury, a key molecule for mesoderm specification that is silenced in adult tissues8. Brachyury re-expression in notochord remnants is believed to play a major role in chordoma onset and maintenance and its expression is considered the main distinctive molecular marker of chordomas9. Brachyury expression is therefore considered a mandatory feature for the validation of chordoma cell lines10. Chordomas consistently also express other molecular markers, such as epithelial membrane antigen (EMA), vimentin, cytokeratin 19, CD24v and CAM5.23, 8, 11. Moreover, variable expression and activation of several receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs) and downstream signaling buy 103909-75-7 molecules have been reported. Among these, EGFR, PDGFR and MET represent the most frequently expressed and activated RTKs in chordoma12C14. Very few bona fide chordoma cell lines have been available until recently, limiting the identification of relevant targets and the development of effective drugs. Validated chordoma cell lines available from IL1-ALPHA the Chordoma Foundation (a global chordoma patient advocacy group, www.chordomafoundation.org) include the prototype cell lines U-CH1 and U-CH2 and a few other more recently established cell lines15C17. Here we describe the generation and characterization of the new Chor-IN-1 chordoma cell line, established from a surgical sample of a sacral chordoma. The Chor-IN-1 cell line was shown to display the morphological and growth features of chordoma and to express brachyury, as well as other key relevant markers associated with chordoma diagnosis. This newly established cell line was characterized in parallel with U-CH115, U-CH215, MUG-Chor116 and JHC717 chordoma cell lines by Next Generation Sequencing (NGS), in order to compare genomic profiles and to evaluate the expression of kinases which might represent potential new therapeutic targets. Results Chor-IN-1 cell line establishment The original surgical sample was obtained from a 55 year old man diagnosed with a locally advanced sacral chordoma. A sacral nodule of 2?cm of diameter, macroscopically invading the surrounding soft tissues, was surgically excised. Histological diagnosis of chordoma was made according to WHO classification (2013). Morphologically, the tumor recapitulated the features of conventional chordoma, exhibiting lobulated growth of round epithelioid cells separated by fibrous septa. The cells, arranged in ribbons and nests, showed eosinophilic and/or vacuolated cytoplasms (physaliferous morphology) and were embedded into abundant extracellular matrix. Immuno-phenotyping revealed expression of vimentin, S100, brachyury and EMA (Fig.?1a). Figure 1 Tumor and Chor-IN-1 cell line characterization by H&E and IHC. (a) The original tumor sample and (b) the derived Chor-IN-1 cell line were characterized by H&E, revealing the typical physaliferous cells, and by IHC, showing positivity for … The new cell line was established by mechanical and enzymatic disaggregation of the fresh aseptic surgical chordoma sample followed by seeding of the resulting cell suspension in collagen-coated tissue culture plates. Once stabilized in culture,.