小中大ATCC No. HB-8065 Hep G2 (Hepatocellular carcinoma, human)
Hep G2 is a perpetual cell line which was derived from the liver tissue of a 15 year old Caucasian American male with a well differentiated hepatocellular carcinoma. These cells are epithelial in morphology, have a model chromosome number of 55 and are not tumorigenic in nude mice. The cells secrete a variety of major plasma proteins; e.g., albumin, transferrin and the acute phase proteins fibrinogen, alpha 2-macroglobulin, alpha 1-antitrypsin, transferrin and plasminogen. They have been grown successfully in large scale cultivation systems. Hepatitis B virus surface antigens have not been detected. Hep G2 cells have been shown to be G418 resistant (400 µg/mL). The cells will respond to stimulation with human growth hormone.
HepG2 cells are a suitable in vitro model system for the study of polarized human hepatocytes. (An other well-characterized polarized hepatocyte cell lines includes the rat hepatoma-derived hybrid cell line WIF-B (Ihrke et al., 1993)). With the proper culture conditions, HepG2 cells display robust morphological and functional differentiation with a controlable formation of apical and basolateral cell surface domains (van IJzendoorn et al., 1997; 2000, etc.) that resemble the bile canalicular (BC) and sinusoidal domains, respectively, in vivo.
Because of their high degree of morphological and functional differentiation in vitro, HepG2 cells are a suitable model to study the intracellular trafficking and dynamics of bile canalicular and sinusoidal membrane proteins and lipids in human hepatocytes in vitro. This can be important for the study of human liver diseases that are caused by an incorrect subcellular distribution of cell surface proteins, e.g. hepatocanalicular transport defects such as Dubin-Johnson Syndrome and progressive familial intrahepatic cholestasis (PFIC), and familial hypercholesterolemia. HepG2 cells and its derivatives are also used as a model system for studies of liver metabolism and toxicity of xenobiotics, the detection of cytoprotective, anti (environmental and dietary) genotoxic and cogenotoxic agents, understanding hepatocarcinogenesis, and for drug targeting studies. HepG2 cells are also employed in trials with bio-artificial liver devices.
