Human diploid cell strains (HDCSs)… are of great use in developing human vaccines.
We have developed a new HDCS, Walvax- 2, which we derived from the lung tissue of a 3-month-old fetus.
Source tissue material
We obtained 9 fetuses… Walvax-2 was derived from a fetal lung tissue, similar to WI-38 and MRC-5, and was obtained from a 3-month old female fetus aborted because of the presence of a uterine scar from a previous caesar- ean birth by a 27-year old healthy woman.
It took us 4 y to successfully establish Walvax-2 cell lines…
The fetal material was provided by the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of Yunnan Hospital, with legal and ethical agreements from the donator.
Before the study, we made strict and comprehensive inclusion criteria in order to guarantee a high quality cell strain: 1) gestational age 2 to 4 months; 2) induction of labor with the water bag method; 3) the parents career should not involve contact with chemicals and radiation; 4) both parents are in good health without neoplastic and genetic diseases, and with no history of human tissue or organ transplantation in the families traced for 3 generations; and 5) no infectious diseases.
The tissues from the freshly aborted fetuses were immediately sent to the laboratory for the preparation of the cells.