Transformation and preliminary characterization of primary human pulp cells.

The odontoblast is the cell responsible for dentin formation and mineralization during tooth development. A number of primary pulp cell culture systems have been used to study the mechanism of dentinogenesis in vitro. One of the difficulties in using primary cells is the limited number of cell divisions they will undergo. In this study, this problem was addressed by transfecting primary cultures of human pulp cells with an SV40-adenovirus construct. This resulted in the establishment of transformed human pulp cells, which were named HPC-T. A series of preliminary experiments were performed to characterize these cells, including their morphology, cell proliferation, alkaline phosphatase production, and cytogenetic make-up. The results demonstrate that SV40-transformed human pulp cells retain many of the characteristics of the parent primary cells and may be useful in the study of pulp cell function in vitro.