Establishment and characterization of immortalized human coronary endothelial cells.

We established an immortalized cell line from endothelial cells derived from a human coronary artery, isolated at autopsy from 76-year-old male, by transfecting the cells with origin-minus simian virus 40 DNA. These cells showed SV40 T antigen in the nuclei and Ulex europaeus I agglutinin and factor VIII-related antigen, as endothelial cell markers, in their cytoplasm. This cell line synthesized prostacyclin, tissue-type plasminogen activator (tPA), and plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) as well as produced the proform of matrix metalloproteinase 1, which was activated by cultivating the cells with plasminogen. These findings reveal that this immortalized endothelial cell line retains characteristics of human coronary endothelial cells, indicating that this cell line is useful for studying atherogenesis of the coronary artery.