Differential Characterization of Human Umbilical Artery and Umbilical Vein Endothelial Cells under Same Culture Conditions In Vitro

The damage of vascular endothelial cells is related to the development of many cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, which has become an important research subject in the fields of life science and pharmaceutical industry. In vitro isolation and identification of vascular endothelial cells is important for studying vascular function and establishing a cellular model for cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases. The present study has used a simple and rapid isolation and culture system for HUAEC (human umbilical cord artery endothelial cells) and HUVEC (human umbilical cord vein endothelial cells) with a high purity, and investigates systematically the dynamic changes in biological characteristics including morphology, proliferation, tube formation, surface antigen and the expression of specific genes of both HUAEC and HUVEC under the same culture conditions in vitro. This research found that there was no significant difference in the morphology, tube forming ability, surface antigen (CD144, CD31, CD309, CD133, CD34) between HUAEC and HUVEC for a long-term continuous subculture, although HUAEC showed a higher proliferation activity than HUVEC. In freshly isolated HUAEC and HUVEC, the expression levels of the specific genes for artery and vein respectively were significantly different (HUAEC high expression in EFNB2, DLL4, NRP1, CXCR4; HUVEC high expression in EPHB4, COUP-TF II). However, during the prolonged culture period (after passage 6) HUAEC lost then its specific gene expression, whereas HUVEC remained its high expression of the specific genes. In conclusion, HUVEC-specific expression genes EPHB4 and COUP-TF II can be used as reliable identification markers for distinguishing human umbilical cord artery- from umbilical cord vein-derived endothelial cells cultured in vitro.

CSTR: 32200.14.cjcb.2020.04.0013