Culturing of Human Nasal Epithelial Cells at the Air Liquid Interface

The overall goal of this procedure is to culture undifferentiated nasal epithelial cells at the air liquid interface. This is accomplished by first obtaining superficial nasal epithelial cells from a human volunteer. The second step is to seed the cells on tissue culture plates and then expand the cells in flasks.

Next, the expanded cells are seeded into transwells and grown to co fluency. The final step is to remove the apical tissue culture medium of the confluent cell cultures on the transwells to establish air liquid interface culture conditions. Ultimately, cells grown at the air liquid interface for three to four weeks will redifferentiate into a mucociliary nasal epithelial cell culture, mimicking the phenotype of the nasal epithelium in vivo.