Gene expression analysis of human fallopian tube stem cells and air-liquid interface differentiation. Homo sapiens

If the fallopian tube is the origin of serous cancer, one possible mechanism for the evolution of cancer is a dysregulation of indigenous stem cells. We therefore set out to clone the stem cells of the human fallopian tube using methods to clone columnar epithelial stem cells such as human intestinal stem cells. Using this method, we were able to generate clones of fallopian tube stem cells that contain many small, undifferentiated cells. These stem cell clones show strong and consistent staining with markers of fallopian tube epithelial cells (PAX8). We also established an air-liquid interface culture system to differentiate fallopian tube stem cell to both ciliated cells and non-ciliated cells. Overall design: Stem cell are cloned from human fallopian tube, and cells are differentiated in air-liquid interface culture system. Total RNA was isolated with Picopure RNA isolation kit for stem cells and RNeasy kit for ALI samples. We used affymetrix HuEx-1_0-st-v2 array to hybridize all samples.