Resources for choosing a cell line

Hi,

Are there any resources out there to help with choosing a cell line for an
experiment?

For example, i'd like to do some experiments with epithelial cells;
ideally, they'd be human, properly polarised, and not too transformed (and
i don't want to get into primary cultures yet). However, i don't know
which cell line i should use for this; HeLa is too screwed up, MDCK and
CHO aren't human, MCF-7 or HEP G2 aren't too bad but are cancer lines, and
i can't think of any others off the top of my head.

The only sources of information i know of that i can turn to are the
ATCC/ECACC catalogues (which are are focused on the lines rather than the
applications) and word of mouth and literature searches, both of which are
a bit haphazard. Any other suggestions?

Thanks,
tom

--
Tom Anderson, MRC Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology, UCL

In article <[Only registered users see links. ].ac.uk>, Tom Anderson <[Only registered users see links. ].ac.uk> wrote:

[Only registered users see links. ]
may help. Search for "epithel* AND human" gives 300 hits...

DK

On Wed, 7 Jan 2004, D.K. wrote:


Something similar with the ATCC database gets 369 hits. And that's
precisely the problem! I'm lost in a sea of data!

Tom

--
Tom Anderson, MRC Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology, UCL

In article <[Only registered users see links. ].ac.uk>, Tom Anderson <[Only registered users see links. ].ac.uk> wrote:

In which case there is

[Only registered users see links. ].
dsp_searchAdvanced

Human epithelial non-primary gives nice 3 hits. One of them is not
tumorigenic. No choice - no problem :-))

DK

On Wed, 7 Jan 2004 14:05:01 +0000, Tom Anderson
<[Only registered users see links. ].ac.uk> wrote:

[...]


Perhaps Caco-2, or one of its derivatives, would suit your purposes. A
search of ATCC suggests that C2BBe1 (ATCC# CRL-2102), a subclone that
Caco-2 that expresses brush boder proteins, might be suitable.


Nick

--
Nick Theodorakis
[Only registered users see links. ]
nicholas_theodorakis [at] urmc [dot] rochester [dot] edu

Tom Anderson wrote:


Have you considered CaCo-2? This is a human colon cancer cell line, but
grows in epitelia like assemblies and are used as a standard model for
transport (e.g. blood/brain-barrier). And they are easy to maintain.

"Tom Anderson" <[Only registered users see links. ].ac.uk> wrote in message
news:[Only registered users see links. ].ac.uk...

There is also [Only registered users see links. ] (Deutche Sammlung von Mikroorganismen und
Zellkulturen).

-Emir

On Fri, 9 Jan 2004, Dr Engelbert Buxbaum wrote:


Funnily enough, i came across these for the first time on thursday - a lab
downstairs is using them. I'll certainly look into it. Don't you have to
grow them on nitrocellulose or something?

I suspect my best course will be to find out what cell lines have most
often been used in experiments related to mine (ie on the same proteins),
and use one of those; it may not be the best possible model, but at least
my results will be directly comparable to those of others. Anyway, that
would make it HEK 293 (or MDCK or U2OS), which isn't too bad.

Thanks,
tom

--
Tom Anderson, MRC Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology, UCL

On Sat, 10 Jan 2004 18:53:25 +0000, Tom Anderson
<[Only registered users see links. ].ac.uk> wrote:


[....]


If you need access to the basolateral surface, you can grow them on
filters or transwells or something similar. Otherwise, you can grow
them on regular TC dishes.

Nick

--
Nick Theodorakis
[Only registered users see links. ]
nicholas_theodorakis [at] urmc [dot] rochester [dot] edu

"Tom Anderson" <[Only registered users see links. ].ac.uk> wrote in message
news:[Only registered users see links. ].ac.uk...
Why not primary? Have you looked into HUVEC?