Abstract
BEAS-2B was originally established as an immortalized but non-tumorigenic epithelial cell line from human bronchial epithelium. Because of general recognition for its bronchial epithelial origin, the BEAS-2B cell line has been widely used as an in vitro cell model in a large variety of studies associated with respiratory diseases including lung carcinogenesis. However, very few studies have discussed non-epithelial features of BEAS-2B cells, especially the features associated with mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), which represent a group of fibroblast-like cells with limited self-renewal and differentiation potential to various cell lineages. In this study, we compared BEAS-2B with a human umbilical cord-derived MSCs (hMSCs) cell line, hMSC1, which served as a representative of hMSCs in terms of expressing common features of hMSCs. It was observed that both BEAS-2B and hMSC1 shared the same expression profile of surface markers of hMSCs and exhibited similar osteogenic and adipogenic differentiation potential. In addition, like hMSC1, the BEAS-2B cell line exhibited suppressive activities on proliferation of mitogen-activated total T lymphocytes as well as Th1 lymphocytes, and IFNγ-induced expression of IDO1, all thus demonstrating that BEAS-2B cells exhibited an almost identical characteristic profile with hMSCs, even though, there was a clear difference between BEAS-2B and hMSCs in the effects on type 2 macrophage polarization. Most importantly, the hMSCs features of BEAS-2B were unlikely a consequence of epithelial-mesenchymal transition. Therefore, this study provided a set of evidence to provoke reconsideration of epithelial origin of BEAS-2B.
Highlights
The BEAS-2B cell line has been a widely used immortalized but non-tumorigenic human cell line established from normal human bronchial epithelium obtained from a non-cancerous individual by Curtis C
The cell lines used in this study are the BEAS-2B, a human bronchial epithelial cell line, WI-38, a diploid fibroblast cell line of human fetal lung tissue origin, A549 and NCI-H1703, two human non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) cell lines, all of which were collected in our laboratory
BEAS-2B was validated as an immortalized non-tumorigenic human cell line expressing SV40 Large T antigen
Summary
The BEAS-2B cell line has been a widely used immortalized but non-tumorigenic human cell line established from normal human bronchial epithelium obtained from a non-cancerous individual by Curtis C. Harris’ group in 1988 [1]. The cell line was established via transfection with an adenovirus 12-SV40 hybrid virus and subsequent immortalization via consecutive cell passaging [1]. Since being labeled as a bronchial epithelial cell line, BEAS-2B has been extensively used to study cellular and molecular mechanisms involved in lung carcinogenesis, including the role of epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) in lung carcinogenesis [2,3,4], as well as pneumococcal infections [5].
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