Immortalized Human Cardiac Microvascular Endothelial Cells-SV40

Immortalized Human Cardiac Microvascular Endothelial Cells - SV40 are primary human cardiac microvascular endothelial cells (HCMVECs) that have been immortalized through the introduction of SV40 large T antigen, allowing for long-term and stable propagation. They maintain important characteristics of the cardiac microvascular endothelium while also providing increased practicality over primary endothelial cells due to extended lifespan and reduced donor variability, making them particularly well-suited for mechanistic studies and high-throughput screening.

The hallmark of these cells is their maintenance of a microvascular endothelial identity that is specific to the heart. They exhibit typical cobblestone morphology, establish tight cell-cell junctions, and express common endothelial markers such as CD31, VE-cadherin, von Willebrand factor (vWF), and endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS). In terms of function, they respond strongly to shear stress, hypoxia, inflammatory cytokines, and angiogenic factors, which are all stimuli that are of particular relevance to the cardiac microenvironment. Thess cells have been used to study coronary microcirculation, endothelial dysfunction, and cardiac vascular inflammation. In general, they serve as a convenient and reliable in vitro model for the study of mechanisms underlying ischemia-reperfusion injury, diabetic cardiomyopathy, and heart failure-associated microvascular dysfunction.