ECACC has been using EBV immortalisation technology for establishing lymphoblastoid cell lines from human peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBLs) since 1986. In fact, ECACC was one of the pioneering laboratories to use this technology on a large scale particularly following its involvement with the MRC funded Human Genome Mapping project (HGMP) in 1990. Since this technology was introduced, ECACC has processed over 50,000 blood samples and generated over 30,000 cell lines. In addition to those funded by MRC HGMP, ECACC has been involved in the generation of large repositories on behalf of commercial organisations, Diabetes UK, Arthritis and the Rheumatism Council and more recently the Wellcome Trust and Motor Neurone Disease Society. This work has resulted in several technical publications (see below).

Resources
The operation of the service is split into two separate teams specialising in blood processing and EBV immortalisation. The blood processing laboratory is equipped with two class 2 microbiological safety cabinets enabling it to process blood samples for storage as frozen PBLs. Two cell culture laboratories are dedicated to the generation of EBV lymphoblastoid cell lines, which is equipped with 5 class 2 microbiological safety cabinets. Bar-coded tracking systems have been developed to monitor all stages of the process, because 2000 different cell cultures can be in process at any one time. Over the last 2 years ECACC’s overall success rate from a total of 20,000 immortalisations, has been maintained at over 95%. In fact, some individual projects have had success rates as high as 98%.

Capability
ECACC has the capacity to process up to 1600 blood samples and initiate 1000 EBV transformations per month. This capacity is likely to be increased in 2004 because ECACC is involved in serving the needs of Wellcome Trust funded projects with funding from the Wellcome Trust.

EBV Immortalisation service
ECACC offers the above technology as a service to both the academic research community and commercial organisations. For full details on how this service operates click here.

References
Bracegirdle P, Hiscott A, Packer R J, Cooper J and Biggins J. The Provision of a High Throughput Service for the Transformation of Peripheral Blood Lymphocytes (PBLs) Poster presentation at the European Human Genetics Society meeting, Birmingham 2003