[Establishment of rat alveolar type II epithelial cell line RAE-1 and its biological characteristics]

The aim is to establish rat alveolar type II epithelial cell line and to provide cell models for epithelial cell cancer research. Highly pure Lewis rat alveolar epithelial cells were successfully isolated by Nycodenz buoyant density gradient centrifugation in a combination with IgG panning method. Semian virus 40 early region large T gene was virally transferred into primary cultures. After neo gene selection, a cell line RAE-1 was established. The characteristics of this cell line were analyzed. Homologous integration of SV40T gene into RAE-1 cell genome was positively detected by PCR, modal chromosome number of RAE-1 cells was 44, and expressions of cytokeratins 8 and 18 at mRNA level were both positively detected by RT-PCR. The establishment of RAE-1 cell line was very important because it could serve as model cells to study epithelial cell neoplastic transformation mechanisms in hazards-caused alveolar epithelial cancer.