Long-term Culture And Immortalization Of Human Fetal Pancreatic Ductal Cells Transfected By SV40 T Gene

Little is known about the regulation of physiological function, receptor distribution, control of gene expression, and carcinogenesis in human pancreatic ductal cells.One of the major reasons is that it is difficult to isolate and culture the main pancreatic ductal cells. It is also due to the fact that normal human epithelial cells can only be cultured for very limited number of passages.As a result, it is virtually impossible to carry on any specific long-term research on these cells. Therefore, to establish an immortalized normal human pancreatic ductal cell line is of prime importance, since it can serve as a model for various purposes in research.Human fetal pancreas (20th-30th week of gestation) was digested with collagenase into cell pellets, which were then plated to flasks in 10% FBS complete medium.Twenty-four hours later, these pellets were cultured in 2% FBS complete medium.When the cells reached 90% confluency, they were subcultured. These subcultures were propagated at least for 2 generations. If primary cultures were not subcultured, they might live for 2 months.