A newly established porcine aortic endothelial cell line: characterization and application to the study of human-to-swine graft rejection.

The establishment of cell lines allows reproductible in vitro studies that would be far more difficult to perform using primary cells that rapidly undergo phenotypical alterations in culture. The purpose of this work was to establish an endothelial cell line appropriate for in vitro study of endothelial cell activation during xenograft rejection. Porcine aortic endothelial cells were transfected with the early region of SV40 and selected on the basis of morphological, phenotypical, and functional features. By light and electron microscopy, the porcine aortic endothelial cell line (PAEC11) and primary cells were similar except that PAEC11 was slightly smaller. PAEC11 displayed endothelial cell characteristics since it endocytosed acetylated low density lipoproteins, produced von Willebrand factor, and expressed E-selectin. Human natural antibodies bound to the same xenoantigens on PAEC11 and primary cells. That binding was followed by human complement activation and cell lysis. In addition, PAEC11 was found appropriate for genetic engineering since it could be transfected with a plasmid encoding a foreign gene. Therefore, this cell line should be a useful model for in vitro study of endothelial cell function in general and human-to-swine xenograft rejection in particular.