Immortal cell line

Figure 3. Growth phases of short-term cultures. Upon initiation of short-term cultures, growth rapidly increases (Phase 1). A stable growth rate is maintained for a defined number of passages (Phase 2). Finally, most cells undergo a crisis of senescence and ultimately die (Phase 3). In some cases immortal cell lines are established.

The first immortalized cell line to gain major impact in the development of corneal epithelial cell clones was the rabbit corneal epithelial cell line (RCE, also known as K RCE) introduced by Araki et al. in 1993 [51], Corneal epithelial cells from a New Zealand albino rabbit were transfected with an SV40-vector. After transfection, the cells grew with cobblestone-like appearance and showed stratification, desmosomes, microvilli, and some typical types of... 

Daniele N, Halse R, Grinyo E, Yeaman SJ, Shepherd PR. Conditionally immortalized cell lines as model systems for high-throughput biology in drug discovery. Biochem Soc Trans 30 800-802 (2002). 

Conditionally Immortalized Cell Lines as a Novel in Vitro Inner Blood-Retinal Barrier Model (Uptake Studies)... 

R. Takahashi, M. Hirabayashi, N. Yanai, M. Obinata, and M. Ueda. Establishment of SV40-tsA58 transgenic rats as a source of conditionally immortalized cell lines. Exp. Anim. 48 255-261(1999). 

Since the human airway epithelial cells will be used as a paradigm for the transformation of different cell lines, the following descriptions will focus on primary airway epithelial cells. The generation and isolation of an immortalized cell line is relatively straightforward, but requires attention to detail. Generally, primary cultures of cells are isolated from tissue using mechanical and/or enzymatic cellular dissociation protocols [21, 88-90] (Appendix 1). 

Takenouchi, T., Y. Iwamaru, M. Sato, T. Yokoyama, M. Shinagawa, and H. Kitani. 2007. Establishment and characterization of SV40 large T antigen-immortalized cell lines derived from fetal bovine brain tissues after prolonged cryopreservation. Cell Biolint 31(l) 57-64. 

DNA from any source can be utilized for pharmacogenetics research, including germline and tumor sources. Immortalized cell lines can provide an almost infinite DNA resource, and genotyping of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)-transformed immortalized lymphoblastoid cells has demonstrated similar allele frequencies to equivalent... 

In the laboratory the immortal cell lines are those derived from cancer. The most famous is the HeLa cancer cells that many of us use as one of the cell lines tested against various anticancer agents. The name HeLa cells is derived from Henrietta Lacks, a black woman, who died from cervical cancer. The cells are so strong that they invade other cell lines, both healthy and other cancer cell lines, giving contaminated or mutated cell lines. HeLa cells have good telomerase levels. If antisense RNA is added to HeLa cells so that the RNA contains the opposite message to the ordinary RNA in the telomerase, the effect is that the telomerase is blocked and the HeLa cells are no longer immortal and die after about 25 replications. 

The in vitro assays described below can be run in a cell-free or cell-based manner. It should be obvious that for cell-based assays, the result will be dependent on the type of cell used, the media to which the cell is exposed and the developmental stage of the cell. Although all cells from a given individual share the same DNA, genes and pathways are turned on in a cell type-specific manner. For instance, xenobiotic metabolizing enzymes are expressed at high levels in hepatocytes, but not in most epithelial cells. Cell types are characterized as primary (taken directly from an animal and used immediately) or immortalized cell lines, which are typically derived from... 

Cell line (Henrietta Lacks, immortal cell line)... 

In 1975, Kohler and Milstein reported (1) that immortal cell lines secreting antibody of a single specificity could be produced by the artificial fusion of splenocytes derived from an immune mouse and tumour cells derived from a murine myeloma. They called these cell lines hybridomas and the product from them monoclonal antibodies. The development of monoclonal antibodies opened up huge possibilities in all areas of antibody use because reagents could be created with specificity to a single domain (epitope) on the target... 

Although efforts are underway to identify markers in serum and prostate tissue, the question arose as to whether metastatic prostate cancer cell lines accurately represent in vivo disease. It was found that in vitro cell cultures (LnCaP and PC3) shared less than 20% of proteins when compared to in vivo LCM procured malignant prostate cancer. 2D-PAGE protein profiles were used to compare normal and malignant cells to immortalized cells from the same patient. Protein expression patterns were dramatically altered when cells were grown in culture and immortalized most notably, a loss of prostate specific antigen expression was observed [18]. Thus, caution must be used when working with immortalized cell lines to discover potential disease markers. 

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