Cell Line Platforms Support Research into Arthropod Immunity

Abstract

Innate immune responses are essential to maintaining insect and tick health and are the primary defense against pathogenic viruses, bacteria, and fungi. Cell line research is a powerful method for understanding how invertebrates mount defenses against pathogenic organisms and testing hypotheses on how these responses occur. In particular, immortal arthropod cell lines are valuable tools, providing a tractable, high-throughput, cost-effective, and consistent platform to investigate the mechanisms underpinning insect and tick immune responses. The research results inform the controls of medically and agriculturally important insects and ticks. This review presents several examples of how cell lines have facilitated research into multiple aspects of the invertebrate immune response to pathogens and other foreign agents, as well as comments on possible future research directions in these robust systems.

Isolation in Natural Host Cell Lines of Wolbachia Strains wPip from the Mosquito Culex pipiens and wPap from the Sand Fly Phlebotomus papatasi

“…The new insect cell lines and cultured Wolbachia strains reported in the present study will facilitate research not only into interactions between the parent arthropods and the bacteria at the cellular level but, also, into human and veterinary pathogens carried by C. pipiens, P. papatasi and L. longipalpis and the influence of Wolbachia on their transmission [89,90].…”

Establishing and characterising a new cell line from Calliphora vicina (diptera: calliphoridae) fly embryonic tissues

“…A more recent illustrative review dealt with the use of insect- and tick-derived cell lines for investigating different aspects of the immune response, i.e. analysing the innate cellular response by stimulating antigens for inducing AMP production ( Goodman et al., 2021 ).…”

“…Insect cell lines have contributed significantly to the development of physiological studies of the insect species from which they are derived ( Goodman et al., 2021 ). These cell cultures also represent important biotechnological tools in the fields of immunology, molecular biology, genetics and biopesticide research ( Arunkarthick et al., 2017 ); they have even been used in studies regarding parasite-host relationships, the spread of specific pathogens and in the biopharmaceutical industry, particularly concerning recombinant protein expression ( Smagghe et al., 2009 ).…”

In Vitro and In Vivo Models to Assess the Immune-Related Effects of Nanomaterials

“…Many human and mouse cell lines are available, usually derived from lymphomas or leukemias, representing all types of innate and adaptive immune cells (T and B lymphocytes, monocytes, macrophages, dendritic cells, eosinophils, basophils, neutrophils, NK, etc.). In invertebrates, a number of insect cell lines have been developed that can help assess in more detail the immune/defensive reactivity to external challenges [84]. A disadvantage of continuous cell lines is that their validity as a proxy of primary, normal cells is not obvious, and needs to be assessed for each cell line and each immune biomarker.…”