Factors which stimulate the growth of human umbilical vein endothelial cells in vitro

Abstract

Human vascular endothelial cells which form a functional monolayer interface between tissue and blood (1, 2) have consistently proven difficult to propagate in vitro. Unlike endothelial cells from bovine vasculature which can be propagated in culture with relative ease (3), human vascular endothelial cells can only be grown at very high cell seed densities for short periods of time in serum-supplemented cultures (4–6). Although it is well established that serum provides a multiplicity of hormones and mitogenic factors for mammalian cell growth in vitro (7–10), the human vascular endothelial cell is unique among the cells involved in blood vessel biology since the endothelial cell responds poorly to the mitogenic influences of serum (6, 11). These observations are consistent with the low mitotic index observed for the endothelium in vivo, (12). In practical terms, the serumsupplemented cell culture systems which were designed for the growth of endothelial cells are more conducive for the selective growth of vascular smooth muscle cells (13), a common contaminant of endothelial cell cultures. Human umbilical vein (HUV) endothelial cells have been chosen as an in vitro model for the human vasculature because of tissue availability. However, the low mitotic index of the HUV endothelial cell in culture has made long term, large scale culture of these cells impractical. In turn, the inability to grow large numbers of HUV endothelial cells has made studies of a variety of cell properties quite difficult and has significantly hindered rapid elucidation of the cell biology of the human endothelium.KeywordsHuman Umbilical Vein Endothelial CellEndothelial Cell GrowthCell Culture DishHuman Vascular Endothelial CellCell BioIThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.