Establishment of a pure vascular endothelial cell line from human placenta

Endothelial cells (EC) from various sectors of the circulatory system have distinct characteristics, some of which have only been identified in cultures upon their isolation from specific organs or tissues. Cultured vascular EC, derived from the human placenta (HPEC), may be helpful for studying their specific function in the fetoplacental unit, such as in the control of maternofetal traffic. In this paper we report an improved method for isolation, purification and culture of HPEC, that implies an enzymatic perfusion of the term placenta, followed by separation of resulting cells on a Percoll density gradient. The inoculated starting suspension was purified by a two-step selection procedure, based on differential trypsinization, leading to a pure population of about 8x10(7)cells/placenta, with 2.7-3.4 population doublings. The average population doubling time during eight passages was 60-65 h and the life span of HPEC was approximately 45-50 population doublings. The cell morphology at optical and electron microscopical level revealed a good differentiation of HPEC, which were endowed with numerous plasmalemmal vesicles (caveolae) and Weibel-Palade bodies. The transendothelial electrical resistance of the HPEC monolayer varied between 22 and 52 Ohm/cm(2). The cultures were mycoplasma free, as revealed by fluorescence microscopy using DNA dyes and the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The negative immunofluorescent reaction for keratin confirmed that the HPEC were not contaminated with either type of placenta cells, as syncytiotrophoblast. Cultured HPEC demonstrated a strong reaction for von Willebrand factor antigen (by fluorescence microscopy), took up AcLDL-DiI and expressed active angiotensin converting enzyme. These characteristics substantiate the endothelial nature of cultured cells. The interactions with different lectins (BS-I, SBA, RCA, UEA and WGA) assessed by fluorescence microscopy and blotting reveal a strong reaction of HPEC with UEA and a negligible reaction with BS-I lectin. WGA lectin displayed a marked fluorescence staining in subconfluent HPEC, and at the level of intracellular clefts in post-confluent cultures.

(i) we have obtained a pure line of cultured EC originating from the human placental venous side of the circulatory tree; (ii) the cells have the general characteristics and markers ascribed to EC; (iii) as opposed to large human placental vessels, HPEC do not react to BS-I lectin and, unlike human umbilical vein EC, have a much higher proliferation rate and a long lifespan; (iv) HPEC expressed a characteristic glycosylated coat particularly rich in alpha- L -fucose and beta-GlcNAc containing glycocompounds.