endothelial cells vs HUVEC cells?

HUVEC (human umbilical vein endothelial cells) are the endothelial cells isolated from the umbilical vein and usually supplied as a pool obtained from several human donors. They are considered a primary endothelial cell line as they are untransformed cells that can be maintained in culture for several passages without growth inhibition. They are often used for the angiogenesis studies not because of adequate representation of the vascular endothelial cells in vivo, but because they are relatively easy to obtain and culture. However, endothelial cells in vivo are heterogeneous with significant differences found between organs, microenvironment (e.g. quiescent vs tumor), large and small blood vessels, and arteries and veins thus depending on the actual scientific problem it might be better to use site specific endothelial cells instead HUVEC.

Endothelial cells from different sources may have different phenotypes ( HUVEC, microvascular, aortic, brain blood barrir, hepatic sinusoid, lymphatic, glomerular etc) and functional activities and this has been repeatedly reported in the literature. I am not aware of studies comparing cells from different origins in angiogenic assys and in the assays I have used with different cells ( mainly tube differentiation in Matrigel) I did not observe clear diffferences although the experiments were not designed for this purpose. My recommendation is that you test and standardize the assay you want to use with different cells. I also want to recommend a couple of reviews about phenotypic heterogeneity of endothelial cells: “Motherwell JM et al Sci Rep 2017” and “Lin Y et all Ather Tromb Vasc Biol 2017”

HUVEC (human umbilical vein endothelial cells) are the endothelial cells isolated from the umbilical vein and usually supplied as a pool obtained from several human donors. They are considered a primary endothelial cell line as they are untransformed cells that can be maintained in culture for several passages without growth inhibition. They are often used for the angiogenesis studies not because of adequate representation of the vascular endothelial cells in vivo, but because they are relatively easy to obtain and culture. However, endothelial cells in vivo are heterogeneous with significant differences found between organs, microenvironment (e.g. quiescent vs tumor), large and small blood vessels, and arteries and veins thus depending on the actual scientific problem it might be better to use site specific endothelial cells instead HUVEC.