Human embryonic palatal mesenchymal cells

Caldwell V, Loch-Caruso R. 1992. Chlordecone rapidly and reversibly inhibits gap junctional communication in human embryonic palatal mesenchyme cells. In Vitro Toxicol 5(2) 113-122. 

Zhao F, Mayura K, Hutchinson RW, et al. 1995. Developmental toxicity and structure-activity relationships of chlorophenols using human embryonic palatal mesenchymal cells. Toxicol Lett 78 35-42. 

The implementation of animal test protocols in the 1980s has been accompanied by the development of a host of alternative methods to study adverse effects of chemicals on reproductive and developmental parameters. For example, rat whole embryo culture stems from the seventies (16), as does the rat limb bud organ culture (17) and rat limb bud and brain micromass was developed in the eighties (18). An elegant nonvertebrate alternative model used regeneration of polyps of Hydra atUnuata from dissociated cells (19). Animal-free in vitro alternatives include those employing the proliferation of a human embryonic palatal mesenchymal cell line (20), the attachment of a mouse ovarian tumor cell line (21), and the differentiation of a neuroblastoma cell line (22) and a embryonal carcinoma cell line (23). Various overviews of methods have been published over the years (24). The predictability of... 

Takechi, R., Taniguchi, A., Ebara, S., Fukui, T., and Watanabe, T., 2008. Biotin deficiency affects the prohferation of human embryonic palatal mesenchymal cells in culture. The Journal of Nutrition. 138 680-684. 

Human embryonic palatal mesenchymal cells (HEPM, ATCC CRL-1486) were seeded onto the coated surfaces in multiple 24-well tissue culture plates (50,000 cells/well). The cultures were maintained in Dulbecco s modified eagles medium (DMEM) supplemented with fetal bovine serum (FBS, 10%), L-glutamine (2 pmol/ml), penicillin G (100 U/ml), streptomycin sulfate (100 pg/ml) and amphotericin B (0.25 pg/ml). Replicate cultures were incubated at 37 C for 6, 24 and 72 hours and then harvested for analysis. 

Tissue culture has been used to a limited extent for developmental toxicity studies of the studies that have used tissue culture systems, those using chick neural crest cells (Greenberg, 1982) and human embryonic palatal mesenchyme (Pratt et al., 1980, 1982) have been especially useful. In addition, the micromass teratogen test, first described by Flint Orton (1984), has been used as a screening tool, and this test has been used successfully for many years. This method uses cultures of limb and CNS cells. Rat cells are normally used, but mouse and chick cells have also been studied. Many different endpoints can be assessed. For a detailed description of the method, the validation studies and discussion of its predictive value, see Flint... 

Pratt RM, Grove Rl, Willis WD (1982) Prescreening for environmental teratogens using cultured mesenchymal cells from the human embryonic palate. Teratog Cardnog Mutagen, 2 313-318. 

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