Introduction Mono Mac 1 and Mono Mac 6
Mono Mac 1 and Mono Mac 6 are sister cells lines established from peripheral blood of a patient with acute monoblastic leukemia (Ziegler-Heitbrock, International J Cancer, 41: 456, 1988). Both lines were cloned from the original cultures by limiting dilution and after expansion they were characterized with respect to phenotype and function. Both lines are positive for macrophage specific esterases, for lysozyme and for reactive oxygen production. Also they can perform phagocytosis and express cell surface CD14. For the latter two features Mono Mac 6 cells show higher levels, indicating that this line is more mature compared to Mono Mac 1. The cell lines can be used in leukemia research or as models for human monocytes in the study of cell biology, physiology, molecular biology and gene expression and of pharmacology.
The cell lines are very delicate and require expert cell culture handling, including avoidance of mycoplasma contamination and use of culture media free of microbial compounds like lipopolysaccharide.
With this taken care of, the lines are highly informative tools for a broad spectrum of research projects. The cell lines (authenticated, mycoplasma-free) are available to researchers at the DSMZ cell line bank (www.DSMZ.de) as detailed below.