Rendre des cellules humaines immortelles

This invention was made with government support under grant number PSOHL54881 awarded by the National Institutes of Health Heart and Lung Institute. The government has certain rights in the invention.

1. Field of the Invention The present invention provides methods for producing immortalized precursor cell populations, said methods comprising culturing non-immortalized precursor cells in the presence of a Notch agonist and one or more proliferation-promoting growth factors for a time period beyond which cells of said precursor cell type stop proliferating and/or die. The invention further provides methods for producing immortalized and differentiated cell types comprising exposing precursor cells prior or following immortalization to conditions that promote their differentiation. Clonal cell lines can be established from the immortalized cells. The immortalized cells or clonal cell lines derived therefrom can be used for cell therapy. The present invention further provides methods for screening for Notch agonists and antagonists, and for identifying genes and gene products that are differentially expressed in the differentiation of precursor cells into more differentiated cell types.