Cell culture is an essential tool to study the behavior of individual cells or proto tissues exposed to experimental drugs or genetic modifications. With the development of personalized medicine, there is an increasing need to create easier and quicker ways of testing drugs in patient samples, rather than standard cell lines.

The Cell Immortalization Unit of the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute, coordinated by Dr. Carolina de La Torre and the long-standing experience in the field of Dr. Fernando Setien, offers the infection of B-cells with Epstein–Barr virus (EBV), leading to cell immortalization.

Cultured primary cells undergo a predetermined and limited number of cell divisions. After this limit is reached (this number varies according to species, cell types and culture conditions), the primary cells enter in a state called senescence, in which they no longer divide. Thus, scientists often need to harvest and re-culture new primary cells – something difficult in many situations, since many samples are extremely scarce. Compared with primary cells, immortalized cells can solve this problem, allowing scientists to consistently use the same cells throughout the research project.

The Cell Immortalization Unit has extensive scientific and technological experience to successfully immortalize Lymphocyte cells, working closely with the researchers in an integrated way from the beginning of the project and offering a high-quality customer service experience.

The main applications of cell immortalization are an efficient and reliable production of unlimited numbers of patient-derived cells; the production of high amounts of material for rare genetic disorders; DNA, RNA and protein samples preservation and drug testing analysis.

For more information, please visit our webpage: https://www.carrerasresearch.org/en/cell-immortalization-unit_172651