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Primary cells have a finite life span of less than 10-50 passages in vitro depending on cell type. Immortalizing your cell line will eliminate the frequent need to re-establish fresh cultures from specimens. Immortalized cell lines are capable of extended proliferation and should possess similar or identical genotype and phenotype to the parental tissue.

Immortalization Strategies for Mammalian Cells
Several methods exist for immortalizing mammalian cells in culture. With years of experience, abm has developed the most comprehensive cell immortalization products comprising of ready-to-use retroviral, lentiviral and adenoviral vectors.

Strategies for Immortalization of Mammalian Cells

Gene Overexpressed Viruses Offered Application
hTERT Adenovirus,
Lentivirus,
Retrovirus		 Reliable and commonly used. May cause cell death in some cell types (eg. epithelial cells).
SV40 T Antigen Adenovirus,
Lentivirus,
Retrovirus		 Reliable and commonly used. Often used to immortalize epithelial cells.
EBV genes Epstein-Barr Virus Immortalize B lymphocytes, and sometimes T lymphocytes.
HPV E6-E7 Lentivirus Immortalize keratinocytes.
HOXB8, HOXA9, HOXA10 Lentivirus Immortalize hematopoietic cells, including macrophages, hematopoetic progenitor cells, and myeloid progenitor cells.
Adenoviral E1A-E1B Lentivirus Immortalize a wide range of primary rodent cells, including amniotic fluid cells, primary epithelial cells, fibroblasts, and primary kidney cells.
p53 siRNA, Rb siRNA Lentivirus Co-express with hTERT for better immortalization of epithelial cells.
Bmi1 Lentivirus Immortalize epithelial cells.
CDK4 Lentivirus Co-express with hTERT for a more authentic cell model.
Myc T58A (c-Myc), Ras V12 (H-Ras) Lentivirus Immortalizes a wide variety of cells, including neural stem cells, primary kidney cells, erythroblasts, and a variety of epithelial cells (primary prostate, mammary, airway, etc.).

In order to check the infection efficiency of lentivirus on your target cell line, please use one of the control GFP reporter viruses to optimize infection efficiency.


With years of experience, abm offers the most comprehensive collection of cell immortalization products on the market. Also check out our existing collection of Immortalized Cells or our Custom Cell Immortalization Service .