Establishment of a human polyclonal oral epithelial cell line

Objective. To develop a human oral epithelial cell line to constitute a con tinuous source of cells readily available for human oral epithelial cell re search. Study design. Oral epithelial cells from a 30-week gestational, stillborn m ale fetus were grown in serum-free medium and transfected by lipid-mediatio n with the shuttle vector plasmid, pZ189, containing the T-antigen coding r egion and replication origin from the SV40 virus. Results. Resulting cultures produced foci of rapidly multiplying cells that failed to senesce, in contrast to controls. The transformed culture, desig nated GMSM-K, was polyclonal. The original culture possessed a normal human male karyotype, and the transformed line was largely hypotetraploid. Multi ple clones, isolated from soft agar studies and low density plating, showed decreased doubling times. Electron microscopy and immunohistochemistry con firmed an epithelial phenotype. Cells did not generate tumors in nude mice. Conclusion, Few human epithelial cell lines are available to investigators and most are tumor-derived. The nontumor-derived GMSM-K line has value as a resource for human oral epithelial cell research.