For growing endothelial cells, it is advisable to use 10-20% fetal bovine serum (heat inactivated) in medium with antibiotics (penicillin-streptomycin).

For actual inflammatory studies, please replace the medium with one containing only 1% fetal bovine serum (heat inactivated) plus antibiotics. The presence of lower serum level would help to both quiesce and synchronize the cells, which is necessary for such studies.

Heat inactivation of serum is needed to inactivate factors that can activate cells, it can be done by placing the bottle of thawed serum in a water bath (55-60C) for 50-60 minutes.

Hope this helps!

TQ Mr. Subhadeep. what do u mean by actual inflammation studies? do u have any reference for me to read? however, i did some reading and most of studies using HUVECs. but there is a book - basic cell culture protocol mentioning about human arterial endothelial cells for inflammation studies. does it make a major different interms of cellular activities. i couldn't find a specific or closed to the relations/differences between both two endothelial cells. From your expertise what is possibly giving the greater results interns of cellular level activities of inflammations?

Actual inflammation study would mean the addition of a pro-inflammatory agent (LPS, TNF or IL-8) to the cell cultures. You would need to incubate these cells with one of these agents for 4-6 hrs to get upregulation of inflammatory protein molecules like ICAM-1 and VCAM-1.

HUVECs are widely used and quite suitable for most inflammation studies (you can check out our previous publications for specific conditions).

Not many people have compared different endothelial cells for the same experiments- as far as I can tell.

Good luck.