【Abstract】ObjectiveTo establish adriamycin (ADM) resistant pancreatic cancer cell line SW1990/ADM and to investigate its drug resistance mechanism.MethodsADM-resistant pancreatic cancer cell line SW1990/ADM was obtained by culture of pancreatic cancer cell line SW1990 in vitro with intermittently increasing the concentration of ADM in the culture medium for ten months. After two months of drug free culture, its biological characteristics, drug sensitivity as well as the expression and function of multidrug resistant gene 1 (mdr1) were detected, respectively. ResultsCompared with the parental cell line, SW1990/ADM showed great changes in biological characteristics and developed a cross resistance to various chemotherapy drugs. The drug resistance indexes of cell line SW1990/ADM to ADM, mitomycin, fluorouracil and gemcitabine were 49.60, 7.25, 3.80 and 1.25, respectively. The level of mdr1 mRNA expression in cell line SW1990/ADM was much higher than that of the parental cell line（P＜0.01). ConclusionWe have established adriamycin resistant pancreatic cancer cell line SW1990/ADM with multidrug resistance phenotype, its multidrug resistance is positively relevant to the expression of mdr1.