Male Human Lung Carcinoma Epithelial Cells (A-549 Line)
The A-549 cell line was originally cultivated in 1972 from the human lung carcinoma of a 58-year-old Caucasian male. The line is commonly used to investigate a wide range of respiratory ailments, such as viral infections capable of inducing asthma, tissue damage linked to asbestos exposure, and smoking-related emphysema. Adherent and epithelial in morphology, A-549 cells are positive for keratin by immunoperoxidase staining, but are negative for reverse transcriptase, indicating the lack of integral retrovirus genomes. The A-549 line has been widely employed as a model system to study molecular mechanisms that operate during malignant cell migration.