Hep G2

Hep G2 is a human liver cancer cell line.

Hep G2 is a perpetual cell line which was derived from the liver tissue of a 15-year-old Caucasian American male with a well-differentiated hepatocellular carcinoma. These cells are epithelial in morphology, have a modal chromosome number of 55, and are not tumorigenic in nude mice. The cells secrete a variety of major plasma proteins, e.g., albumin, transferrin, and the acute-phase proteins fibrinogen, alpha 2-macroglobulin, alpha 1-antitrypsin, transferrin, and plasminogen. They have been grown successfully in large-scale cultivation systems. Hepatitis B virus surface antigens have not been detected. HepG2 will respond to stimulation with human growth hormone.

HepG2 cells are a suitable in vitro model system for the study of polarized human hepatocytes. (Another well-characterized polarized hepatocyte cell line is the rat hepatoma-derived hybrid cell line WIF-B). With the proper culture conditions, HepG2 cells display robust morphological and functional differentiation with a controllable formation of apical and basolateral cell surface domains (van IJzendoorn et al., 1997; 2000, etc.) that resemble the bile canalicular (BC) and sinusoidal domains, respectively, in vivo.