CULTURED CILIATED CELLS FOR HIGH THROUGHPUT SCREENING

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): BioTechPlex proposes to develop mammalian tracheal/bronchial airway epithelial cell line, CILSCREEN TM, specifically for high throughput screening. This is based on physiological functional assays. BioTechPlex has accomplished all the proposed Phase I objectives. A) Successfully developed techniques to culture and numerically expand airway epithelial cells while preserving ciliogenesis and ciliary function. B) Developed methodologies to reactivate mechanisms of ciliogenesis to regenerate the cilia following loss of cilia induced by submerged culture. C) Developed methodologies to induce cell polarization so as to induce cilia outgrowth on more than 50 percent of epithelial cells, which maintained normal ciliary beating for at least 3-4 weeks. In this Phase II project, BioTechPlex will incorporate and extend the accomplishments of Phase I to produce viable commercial cell lines in five species to form the first Mammalian Ciliated Cell Bank. Specifically, BioTechPlex will accomplish the following objectives. 1). Further identify factors regulating cell division and differentiation. 2). Produce large quantities of airway epithelial ciliated cells. 3). Characterize the cell lines using biomarkers, morphological characteristics and physiological function, and 4). Establish a Mammalian Ciliated Cell Bank. BioTechPlex plans to facilitate widespread use of airway ciliated epithelial cells for cell function studies, i.e. the cells will become an alternative to the use of fibroblasts, tumor cell lines and other genetically altered cell lines utilized in high throughput screening for pulmonary drug discovery. These cell model systems will be suitable for the study of normal and induced pathological mechanisms and their related pharmacology.