Long-term culture of porcine bladder epithelial cells

Epithelial cells froth normal pig bladders proliferated when cocultured with lethally irradiated feeder cells of the LA, rat mammary tumor line. When the bladder cells and feeders were plated together at a confluent density. The bladder cells proliferated as the feeder cells died. resulting in a confluent culture of bladder cells. The bladder cells were successfully subcultured by plating kith freshly irradiated LA7, feeder cells. In this way, bladder cells from five pigs were carried to confluency in passages 1, 4, 7, 7, and 13, amounting to at least 6, 18, 24, 26, and 45 doubling, in culture. respectively, and none showed signs of slowed proliferation at the time of culture termination. Fibroblasts never became a prominent feature of these culture:, and their frequency was determined to be about 26 fibroblasts per if, cells in passage 9. Pig bladder cells in 0.5% serum doubled in number in slightly over 3 d, whereas cells in 5.0% serum doubled in about 6 d. In fresh medium without feeder cells only minimal proliferation of bladder cells occurred. In LA7-conditioned medium the bladder cell numbers decreased, leading to the conclusion that the stimulus from LA7 cells is mechanically or physically transmitted. The bladder cells reacted with antibodies to keratin, 7 and 18 but not to keratin 14 or vimentin. Tight junction,. visualized with an antibody to the ZOI protein, connected all the cells to their neighbors. Most cells in passage 9 carried the diploid chromosome number of 38.