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.