Establishment of mouse epithelial lung cell strains and cell lines

Mesenchymal cells have been cultured successfully for many years owing to the ease of their culturability. With the advent of more complex growth media, and some changes to methods, it has become possible to culture epithelial cell types from a wide variety of rodent and human tissue sources successfully (1,2,3). We have used medium CMRL1066 with serum to establish and cultivate lung cell lines that are related to the type II pneumocyte of lung alveolus (4-7). Other laboratories have successfully cultured different types of lung cells, including tracheal and bronchial cell types (1,2,3,8).