Establishment and biological characª²terization of an immortalized human fetal hepatocyte line

    LI Yu1, BAI Xueª²Fan1, WANG Jun2, XU Zhe1, ZHANG Yan1

    1Department of Infectious Disease, Tangdu Hospital, Fourth Military Medical University, Xi¬ðan 710038, China, 2Department of Anesthesiology, Shaanxi Provincial Corps Hospital, Chinese People¬ðs Armed Police Forces, Xi¬ðan 710054, China

    ¡¾Abstract¡¿ AIM: To establish an immortalized human fetal hepatocyte line and to study its biological characteristics and functions. METHODS: Human fetal hepatocytes were transª²fected with pcDNA3.1 recombined vector containing the Simian Virus 40 large T antigen. Characteristics of the immortalized fetal hepatocyte line were evaluated by morphologic and functional detection. RESULTS: One of the hepatocyte clones displaying highly differentiated in liver function and immortalized characteristics had been screened after 40 day selection of 700-300 mg/L G418. The immortalized hepatocyte line maintained the most morphologic characteristics of primary hepatocyte. The cell cloneª²forming rat was 31.2%. The immortalized human fetal hepatocytes had a normal karyotype and were not able to grow in soft agar culture. It had the ability of composing albumin and the immunohistochemical test showed that the SV40T gene had been integrated into the transformed cell genome. CONCLUSION: The immortalized human fetal hepatocyte line has the similar most morphologic characteristics and biological function to primary hepatocytes, and it would become ideal cell material on the study of bioartificial liver and hepatocyte transplantation. ......