Establishment of a human polyclonal oral epithelial cell line

Objective. To develop a human oral epithelial cell line to constitute a continuous source of cells readily available for human oral epithelial cell research. Study design. Oral epithelial cells from a 30-week gestational, stillborn male fetus were grown in serum-free medium and transfected by lipid-mediation with the shuttle vector plasmid, pZ189, containing the T-antigen coding region 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, designated GMSM-K, was polyclonal. The original culture possessed a normal human male karyotype, and the transformed line was largely hypotetraploid. Multiple clones, isolated from soft agar studies and low density plating, showed decreased doubling times. Electron microscopy and immunohistochemistry confirmed 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.