From Curiosity to Breakthroughs: Accelerate Your Drug Development with Assay Ready Cells
April 03, 2025, at 12:00 PM ETAbstract
The human cell line THP-1 is widely used for modeling acute monocytic leukemia, testing new drug compounds, and developing cell and gene therapies. However, challenges such as lengthy cell expansion, genetic drift, microbial contamination, and authentication issues can arise when using THP-1 and other cell lines.
To address these challenges, ATCC developed ThawReady™ platform, which offers THP-1 cells in an assay-ready format. These cells can be used at thaw and perform as well as the cultured parental cell line. In this presentation, we highlight novel applications of the ThawReady™ THP-1 (ATCC® TIB-202-AR™) and THP-1 NFkB-LUC2 (ATCC® TIB-202-NFkB-LUC2-AR™) cells in different in vitro assays. For example, we used these cells to study the anti-inflammatory and anti-apoptotic properties of various types of extracellular vesicles (EVs). Additionally, since THP-1 cells can differentiate into macrophage-like cells we have utilized them for studies relating to HIV-1, demonstrating that ThawReady™ cells are permissive to robust infection in the presence of Phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA). Furthermore, we show that treatment of infected cells with either cART or drugs of abuse can significantly alter the levels of viral replication.
Collectively, our data demonstrates the convenience, consistency, and efficiency of using the ATCC ThawReady™ platform to accelerate innovative and impactful research that has widespread application to multiple fields including immunology, virology, and regenerative medicine.
Key points
- Traditional cell culture can lead to genetic drift, risk for microbial contamination, and misidentified or cross-contaminated cultures.
- To streamline the workflow for cell-based assays, ATCC has recently developed ThawReady™ cells.
- These cells have been cultured and cryopreserved in optimal conditions which enable them to be used in a “thaw and go” assay-ready format.
- This data from multiple experiments demonstrates the convenience, consistency, and efficiency of using the ATCC ThawReady™ THP-1 cells to accelerate drug development.
Presenters
Fatah Kashanchi, PhD
Professor, George Mason University
Dr. Kashanchi received his PhD in 1990 under the supervision of Dr. Charles Wood who also worked with the Nobel Laurite, Dr. Susumu Tonegawa at MIT. He then moved to National Cancer Institute at NIH’s intramural program and continued his work on RNA viral infections with the late John Brady on HIV and HTLV transcription and chromatin complexes. He is currently a Tenured Faculty in the department of Systems Biology at the Prince William Campus of George Mason University. He has obtained independent funding of more than $28.9 M in funding (NIH, DOD, DOE, and Keck) since his departure from NIH in 2000. He has published more than 270 peer-reviewed manuscripts (h index = 76) and served as an editorial board and reviewer for number of journals including Cell, Molecular Cell, Nature, Nature Medicine, Science Translational Medicine, Retrovirology, JBC, J. Virol, Virology, NAR, and 4 PLoS journals. He is a regular NIH study section member and has served on 163 panels and chaired 21 since 2000.
Heather Branscome, PhD
Senior Scientist, ATCC
Dr. Heather Branscome is a Senior Scientist with ATCC. Throughout her 17-year career she has gained broad experience working in both academic and industry settings. She has extensive experience in cell and molecular biology and completed her graduate training in Biosciences from George Mason University. While at ATCC she has held positions in manufacturing, quality control, and technology transfer to support the production and qualification of cell lines and other critical biological reagents to support the scientific community. In her current role she manages a team of biologists to support the CDC’s International Reagent Resources (IRR) program, as well as other government contracts. Since 2018, she has played a key role in establishing and maintaining ATCC’s extracellular vesicle (EV) portfolio. In this role she was responsible for developing and validating large-scale EV manufacturing protocols and performing various EV biochemical and functional assays. Her current research is focused on advanced methods for EV purification, characterization of novel EV subtypes, and mechanistic studies of stem cell-derived EVs in different models of cellular repair. She currently serves as director and instructor for two local Bio-Trac® biotechnology training programs and maintains an active affiliation with George Mason University.
