Applications of cell lines as bioreactors and in vitro models.

ABSTRACT

A cell line is a permanently established cell culture which proliferates indefinitely under given appropriate conditions. The oldest and commonly used human cell line is HeLa.DNA fingerprinting using multi-locus probes, STR profiling, L1 retro transposon marker and Temperature-sensitive SV40 large T antigen are technologies for the identification and characterization of cell lines. Cell lines cost less to maintain, are easier to genetically manipulate, handle and store, moreover their immortal nature enables them to be continuously cultured, distributed and studied in many labs. Cell lines are in vitro models to study the pathway of malignant progression, induction of cellular apoptosis, DNA methylation, histone modifications & tumor suppressor gene expressions, cell culture cytotoxicity assay and so on. The collection of human material for culture must be passed by the relevant hospital’s ethics committee. Cell cultures should be handled in Class II biosafety cabinets and all discarded materials should be autoclaved, incinerated or chemically disinfected. The challenge of improving protein yield and quality is done by generating cell lines that can produce high yields of recombinant proteins, methods of stable gene integration and quality of culture media. Finally, the efficacy of recombinant glycoproteins as a human therapeutic is strongly dependent on their glycosylation. However, cell lines show slow population doubling time, have a finite lifespan, are prone to contamination, genotypic and phenotypic drift and behave differently in culture as compared to when they are a part of a tissue/organ.