HMEC – Human Mammary Epithelial Cells

Product Overview

Lonza's Human Mammary Epithelial Cells (HMEC) are isolated from adult female breast tissue.  The cells have been primarily utilized to understand the formation of breast cancer. Cryopreserved Human Mammary Epithelial Cells are guaranteed through 15 population doublings, express cytokeratins 14 and 18 and are negative for cytokeratin 19.    

Select publications highlighting use of HMECs:  

• In an article, Xinyi Guo et al 2014 New J. Phys. 16 105002, the research team utilized Lonza’s HMEC side-by-side with immortalized HMEC and well-established breast cancer cell lines MCF7 and MDA-MB-231 to understand the effect of neighboring cells on the stiffness of cancerous and non-cancerous human mammary epithelial cells.
• In the article, Elenbaas et al. Genes & Development. 2001, HMECs were propagated in MEGM^TM BulletKit^TM. HMECs expressing LT and hTERT were infected with a retrovirus encoding H-rasV12 and were introduced in mice. The resulting data showed that HMECs have successfully been transformed to tumorigenicity through the introduction of a limited set of oncogenes.

Purchase our Mammary Epithelial Cell Culture Kit (catalog no. CC-2551B) and get a discounted price on cells and media. The kit consists of a cryopreserved ampule of mammary epithelial cells (catalog no. CC-2551) and MEGM^TM BulletKit^TM Growth Media (catalog no. CC-3150)