Immortalized Human Mammary Epithelial Progenitor (K5+/K19+) Cells – hTERT

The immortalized human mammary progenitor cells – hTERT (K5+/K19+) is a clonal cell population of progenitors coexpressing normal mammary and stem cell markers. It has the ability to self-renew and differentiate into luminal and/or myoepithelial cell lineages. Through propagation in different optimized media, the cells are able to give rise to new population of cells with different morphology and characteristics, such as mucin-1 positive cells, vimentin-negative cells, or expressing basal, luminal, and other stem cell markers. Aldehyde dehydrogenase 1A3 enzyme is noticeably higher in expression, a marker commonly used for isolating normal and tumor mammary stem cells. K5+/K19+ cells have Wnt, Notch, and hedeghog gene regulatory pathways. It is a valuable tool in research in the field of biology, the stem/progenitor origin, and the heterogeneity mechanisms in breast cancer.Western blot was used to assess cell lineage-related and stem cell markers.