We are studying metabolic responses to pyruvate and other glycolysis intermediates. Glucose production capacity is not critical for our studies.
Generally speaking, there is no such thing as a cell line that retains most of the functions of a differentiated cell in vivo. I do not have first hand information on puruvate etc in hepatoma cells but if you were beginning with glucose and then looking for intermediates of glycolytic pathway, bear in mind that none of the hepatoma cells have glucose transporter 2 or glucokinase so their their kinetic responses are going to be quite different than hepatocytes in vivo.
From the perspective of glucose metabolism, every single hepatoma cell line I have tested, including HepG2 and Huh7, have been considerably less than useful. As a result, we had to rely on freshly isolated primary hepatocytes and use them the same day or a day later at the most. [Once plated, primary hepatocytes also change but they are still infinitely better than hepatoma cells.]
Of course, your mileage may vary, depending on the nature of your studies. ;)
Generally speaking, there is no such thing as a cell line that retains most of the functions of a differentiated cell in vivo. I do not have first hand information on puruvate etc in hepatoma cells but if you were beginning with glucose and then looking for intermediates of glycolytic pathway, bear in mind that none of the hepatoma cells have glucose transporter 2 or glucokinase so their their kinetic responses are going to be quite different than hepatocytes in vivo.
From the perspective of glucose metabolism, every single hepatoma cell line I have tested, including HepG2 and Huh7, have been considerably less than useful. As a result, we had to rely on freshly isolated primary hepatocytes and use them the same day or a day later at the most. [Once plated, primary hepatocytes also change but they are still infinitely better than hepatoma cells.]
Of course, your mileage may vary, depending on the nature of your studies. ;)
Timothy,
Tamara is correct in that there are other alternatives besides a conventional hepatoma cell line, such as the cells Tamara mentioned. Similarly a few companies, such as Cellular Dynamics Int., are now selling hepatocytes (hepatocyte like cells) derived from pluripotent cells (ESC or iPSC). These version of hepatocytes are much better than any hepatoma cells but as good as they are, even they are not entirely a replacement of hepatocytes. They all seem to be fairly close to hepatocytes but at a developmental stage that is slightly short of quite being there!
On the other hand, it depends on what is it that you want to accomplish in your research and if a cell serves your goal adequately enough.
Tamara, do you know whether HepaRG produce and release glucose in culture?
Tausif, some papers showed Huh7 release glucose in culture. You said it's not useful for glucose metabolism study. Is that because its expression of Glu2 and Gck is different from the primary hepatocytes?
If the purpose is to know how hepatocytes behave, using hepatoma cells will fall short of the target - depending on your focus, you will find many differences, I specified Glut-2 and GK as two specific and significant examples.
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