Primary human umbilical vein and arterial endothelial cells

Human umbilical cords were obtained from the Lucille Packard Children Hospital. In this study, we devised a rapid isolation scheme to preserve the in vivo phenotype of each endothelial subtype. ECs were first isolated from umbilical cords by collagenase perfusion through the vein or artery as described. Cells were further purified using a Percoll density gradient (Amersham Biosciences, Piscataway, NJ) to remove residual erythrocytes and platelets. 1-5 x 106 ECs were then cultured overnight on gelatin-coated T12.5 flasks in Clonetics EGM-2 media (Cambrex Bio Science, Walkersville, MD) in which the ECs generally reached confluence the next morning. The confluent EC were trypsinized and subjected to two rounds of immuno-magnetic beads purification, adapted from a published purification protocol. There was a negative selection step using CD14, CD45 and CD64 to remove residual contaminating leukocytes, followed by positive selection using a mouse anti-endothelial cell monoclonal antibody (anti-CD146/clone P1H12 purchased from Chemicon, Temecula, CA). Total processing time was limited to 20 to 24 hours. The homogeneous, viable, primary ECs were used immediately to construct the library. The construction of SAGE libraries was performed with the I-SAGE kit (Invitrogen, Carlsbad, CA) per manufacturer’s instructions Keywords: other