HCT116

HCT116 is a human colorectal carcinoma cell line widely used in biomedical research. It is employed across oncology, molecular biology, pharmacology, and genetics workflows by laboratories associated with institutions such as National Institutes of Health, Harvard University, Stanford University, University of Cambridge, and University of Tokyo. Researchers studying pathways involved in tumorigenesis, drug response, and DNA repair commonly compare results with other models including HeLa, MCF-7, A549, PC-3, and SW480.

History and derivation

HCT116 was established from a primary tumor resection collected at a clinical center affiliated with a regional hospital network and characterized in early reports distributed among groups at Fox Chase Cancer Center, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Mount Sinai Hospital, Mayo Clinic, and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. The originating specimen was processed during an era of expanding cell culture repositories such as American Type Culture Collection and German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures, paralleling efforts at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Salk Institute, Max Planck Society, Karolinska Institute, and Wellcome Trust. Early passaging, authentication, and distribution connected HCT116 to consortia including the Cancer Genome Atlas and initiatives supported by the National Cancer Institute and European Molecular Biology Laboratory.

Cell line characteristics and genotype

HCT116 displays epithelial morphology and a near-diploid karyotype relative to highly aneuploid models like HeLa and exhibits characteristic mutations including mismatch repair–related alterations similar to variants reported in studies from Johns Hopkins University, University of Oxford, Columbia University, University of California, San Francisco, and University College London. Key genotypic features annotated in databases curated by Broad Institute, European Bioinformatics Institute, GenBank, UniProt, and Ensembl include variants affecting tumor suppressors and signaling components that intersect with pathways studied in work from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Rockefeller University, Institut Pasteur, ETH Zurich, and Princeton University. Chromosomal copy number profiles and single-nucleotide variants have been profiled in projects associated with 1000 Genomes Project, ENCODE Project, International Cancer Genome Consortium, GEO, and ArrayExpress. Phenotypically, HCT116 responds to modulators of apoptosis, cell cycle, and DNA damage signaling in manners compared against cell lines like SW620, LoVo, HT29, DLD-1, and Caco-2 used by groups at Yale University, University of Pennsylvania, UCSF Medical Center, Imperial College London, and University of Melbourne.

Culture conditions and handling

Standard culture protocols for HCT116 are maintained in laboratories at University of Chicago, University of Washington, University of Michigan, University of Toronto, and Seoul National University using media formulations such as those developed by vendors collaborating with Gibco, Sigma-Aldrich, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Corning Incorporated, and Lonza. Typical incubation parameters mirror approaches in publications from Nature, Science, Cell, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and The Lancet with controlled temperature, humidity, and CO2 levels and routine mycoplasma screening protocols aligned with guidelines from World Health Organization, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, European Medicines Agency, Food and Drug Administration, and regional biosafety committees. Handling often includes cryopreservation methods standardized by repositories like ATCC alongside authentication workflows employing short tandem repeat profiling used in collaborative networks involving Broad Institute, Sanger Institute, Beckman Coulter, and Agilent Technologies.

Applications in research

HCT116 is applied extensively across translational studies at institutions such as Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, UCLA, Karolinska Institute, RIKEN, and University of Sydney for screening chemotherapeutics, validating targeted agents developed by pharmaceutical firms including Pfizer, Roche, Novartis, Merck, and AstraZeneca, and for mechanistic investigations into pathways reported in literature from Nature Genetics, Cancer Cell, EMBO Journal, Journal of Clinical Investigation, and Oncogene. It serves in xenograft studies in facilities at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, European Molecular Biology Laboratory, and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and in high-throughput assays aligned with platforms from Illumina, Agilent, PerkinElmer, Thermo Fisher Scientific, and Fluidigm. Researchers utilize HCT116 for studies on mismatch repair, Wnt/β-catenin signaling, p53 pathway modulation, DNA damage response, and epigenetic regulation alongside comparative models such as DLD-1, SW480, HT29, and LoVo.

Genetic modifications and derivatives

Numerous genetically engineered derivatives of HCT116 have been created by laboratories at MIT, Stanford University School of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, University of Cambridge Department of Genetics, and Max Planck Institute employing CRISPR/Cas9, TALENs, and earlier homologous recombination techniques described in methods from Science Translational Medicine, Nature Methods, Genome Research, Cell Reports, and Molecular Cell. Edited lines target genes and loci evaluated in consortium studies from Cancer Genome Atlas, International Cancer Genome Consortium, ENCODE Project, GTEx, and 1000 Genomes Project to produce isogenic pairs altered for KRAS, TP53, APC-related networks, mismatch repair components, and chromatin regulators; these derivatives are reagents shared through repositories including ATCC, European Collection of Authenticated Cell Cultures, Japanese Collection of Research Bioresources, and institutional biobanks at University of California System and University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.