2.1. Cell lines
The human choriocarcinoma BeWo cell line, clone b30 was kindly provided by Prof. Christiane Albrecht (University of Bern, Switzerland) with kind permission from Dr. Alan Schwartz (Washington University, USA). The cell line was cultivated in antibiotic-free, complete high-glucose Dulbecco’s Modified Eagle’s Medium (DMEM) with L-glutamine, supplemented with 10 % fetal bovine serum, while the human transfected first trophoblast HTR-8/SVneo cell line was purchased from American Tissue Culture Collection (ATCC) and cultivated in antibiotic-free RPMI 1640 medium with HEPES and supplemented with 5 % fetal bovine serum. Both cell lines have been cultured at 37 °C with 5% CO2 and regularly tested for Mycoplasma contamination. For experiments the cells were used at the passages 9 to 15 after seeding on 12-well plate and treated for 24, 48 and 72 h.