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Human epithelial cells cultured from urine: Growth properties and keratin staining

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Summary

Epithelial cells can be cultured from the urine of newborn infants, providing a simple, noninvasive biopsy method. We established such cultures by standard techniques from 44% of uncontaminated, specimens obtained from newborn infants up to 1 week of age. There was an average of three colonies per milliliter of urine. Many cultures accomplished 15 to 25 population doublings in as many as five subcultures and yielded total potential culture sizes of 104 to 6×108 cells. Plating efficiency was high at each passage. The cultures displayed two morphologically distinct epithelial cell types. Immunofluorescent staining of keratin fibers in most of these cells further, identified them as epithelial.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pediatrics School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, 21205, Baltimore, Maryland

    Jeanette S. Felix & John W. Littlefield

  2. Department of Dermatology School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, 21205, Baltimore, Maryland

    Tung-Tien Sun

  3. Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy, School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, 21205, Baltimore, Maryland

    Tung-Tien Sun

Authors
  1. Jeanette S. Felix
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  2. Tung-Tien Sun
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  3. John W. Littlefield
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Additional information

This work was supported by NIH grants, CA16754 (J. S. F., J. W. L.) and EY02472, AM25140, AM21358, and a Research Career Development Award (EY00125) to T.-T. S.

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Felix, J.S., Sun, TT. & Littlefield, J.W. Human epithelial cells cultured from urine: Growth properties and keratin staining. In Vitro 16, 866–874 (1980). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02619424

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02619424

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