Artificial cells for the development of cell therapy.

In developing cell therapy, normal human cells are ideal as a cell source, but considering the serious lack of donor organs, it is unlikely to obtain a large enough amount of human cells. Moreover, even with current culturing techniques, the long-term culturing of normal human cells is difficult. On the other hand, in using xenogenic porcine cells and human tumor tissue-derived cell lines, there is concern that species-specific pathogens can be transmitted (such as infection by porcine endogenous retroviruses), and possible cancer may thus develop in recipients. Therefore, we are making efforts toward establishing reversible immortalized human cell lines that can be economically grown in tissue culture using the techniques of gene transfer in order to solve these problems. I here describe a strategy for establishing human reversibly immortalized cell lines that are intended for practical application in cell therapies. I would like to further contribute toward the realization of tissue engineering in fusional coordination with cell-processing technology by the utilization of such cell line constructing techniques.