Characterization of Murine Pituitary-Derived Cell Lines Tpit/F1, Tpit/E and TtT/GF

The pituitary is an important endocrine tissue of the vertebrate that produces and secretes many hormones. Accumulating datasuggest that several types of cells compose the pituitary, and there is growing interest in elucidating the origin of these celltypes and their roles in pituitary organogenesis. Therein, the histogenous cell line is an extremely valuable experimental toolfor investigating the function of derived tissue. In this study, we compared gene expression profiles by microarray analysis andreal-time PCR for murine pituitary tumor-derived non-hormone-producing cell lines TtT/GF, Tpit/F1 and Tpit/E. Several genes arecharacteristically expressed in each cell line: Abcg2, Nestin, Prrx1,Prrx2, CD34, Eng, Cspg4 (Ng2),S100β and nNos in TtT/GF; Cxcl12, Raldh1,Msx1 and Twist1 in Tpit/F1; and Cxadr, Sox9,Cdh1, EpCAM and Krt8 in Tpit/E. Ultimately, we came to the following conclusions: TtT/GF cellsshow the most differentiated state, and may have some properties of the pituitary vascular endothelial cell and/or pericyte.Tpit/F1 cells show the epithelial and mesenchymal phenotypes with stemness still in a transiting state. Tpit/E cells have aphenotype of epithelial cells and are the most immature cells in the progression of differentiation or in the initialendothelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). Thus, these three cell lines must be useful model cell lines for investigating pituitarystem/progenitor cells as well as organogenesis.