A possible correlation between the degree of karyotype aberrations and the rate of sister chromatid exchanges in lymphoma lines

The sister chromatid exchange (SCE) frequencies of six freshly established and two old cell lines derived from patients with lymphatic tumors or leukemia were compared to the SCE rates of lymphoblastoid cell lines of normal controls. All cell lines from malignant tumors displayed significantly higher SCE values than the control lines. In general, the SCE rates seem to be correlated to the number of chromosomal markers and the degree of karyotypic instability of each line.