B104 cells - (Oct/13/2009 )

Does anyone have B104 cells they can share? These neuroblastoma cells are not available at atcc.

I believe these are it right here

gfischer on Wed Oct 14 16:50:02 2009 said:

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NO!! That is not it at all! DO NOT BE CONFUSED BY A SIMPLE TEXT SEARCH OF ATCC. Please read your results carefully before you spread wrong information!

B104 is a rat neuroblastoma, originally generated by Schubert et al. (Schubert D, Heinemann S, Carlisle W, Tarikas H, Kines B, Patrick J,Steinbach JH, Culp W, Brandt BL. Clonal cell lines from rat central nervous system. Nature 249:224-227, 1974. PMID: 4151463) PubMed link. THE ORIGINAL POSTER IS CORRECT... ATCC DOES NOT HAVE B104 CELLS.

The item you pointed to at ATCC is something else called "B104-1-1". This is a mouse fibroblast line generated by Schechter et al. in which they transfected the fibroblasts with DNA harvested from real B104 cells. ATCC's product info is very clear that this isn't a neuroblastoma. ATCC doesn't reference Shubert or any other of the zillions of B104 neuroblastoma references, it only references the single Schechter paper. ATCC's product description is very short and pretty clear... it mentions real rat B104 neuroblastoma cells in order to say how these mouse cells lines were generated... it says:

" was established by A.L. Schechter et al. in 1984 by transfecting NIH/3T3 cells with EcoR1 digested DNA from the rat neuroblastoma cell line B-104. The cells contain the neu transforming gene which codes for a 185000 dalton antigen designated p185. The p185 protein is strongly associated with the presence of glioblastoma and neuroblastoma oncogenes. The neu oncogene is homologous to the erb-B oncogene, and p185 is serologically similar to the epidermal growth factor receptor."

Many neuroblastomas are transformed because they harbor a mutant receptor in the EGFR/ErbB family. Schechter knew this and took some DNA from rat B104 and shoved it into mouse fibroblasts. The fibroblasts became transformed and he named them B104-1-1. This worked because the DNA contained the p185 gene which codes for a mutant receptor also known as "erbB-2", and as "neu", and as "Her-2", which are all members of the EGFR/ErbB family of tyrosine kinase receptors. For more info on this, see these two reviews: (1.) Dougall WC, Qian X, Peterson NC, Miller MJ, Samanta A, Greene MI.Oncogene. The neu-oncogene: signal transduction pathways, transformation mechanisms and evolving therapies. Oncogene 9:2109-23, 1994. PMID: 7913542. PubMed link and (2.) Hung MC, Lau YK. Basic science of HER-2/neu: a review. Semin Oncol 26:51-9, 1999. PMID: 10482194 PubMed link

So... don't confuse B104 rat neuroblastoma cells with ATCC's B104-1-1 mouse fibroblasts that stably express p185(erbB-2/neu/Her-2). Whoever wants real B104 cells has to dig in the literature or ask around to find someone with the real neuroblastoma cell line.

-lapabc-