Human tissue samples were collected from clinically healthy gingiva of subjects who had no history of periodontal disease and relatively healthy periodontium. The gingival tissues were obtained as remnant or discarded tissues following routine dental procedures at the School of Dentistry, USC and the Outpatient Dental Clinic at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center under the approved Institutional Review Board protocol at USC.
Gingival tissues were treated aseptically and incubated overnight at 4°C with dispase (2 mg/ml; Sigma-Aldrich) to separate the epithelial and lower spinous layer. The tissues were minced into 1- to 3-mm2 fragments and digested at 37°C for 2 h in sterile PBS containing 4 mg/ml collagenase IV (Worthington Biochemical). The dissociated cell suspension was filtered through a 70-μm cell strainer (Falcon), plated on nontreated 10-cm petri dishes (VWR Scientific Products) with complete α-MEM (Invitrogen) containing 10% FBS (BD Clontech), 100 U/ml penicillin/100 μg/ml streptomycin (Invitrogen), 2 mMl -glutamine, 100 mM nonessential amino acid, and 550 μM 2-ME (Sigma-Aldrich), and cultured at 37°C in a humidified tissue culture incubator with 5% CO2 and 95% O2. After 72 h, the nonadherent cells were removed. The plastic-adherent confluent cells were passaged with 0.05% trypsin containing 1 mM EDTA and continuously subcultured and maintained in the complete growth medium. Cells from second to sixth passages were used in the experiments.
Gingival tissues were treated aseptically and incubated overnight at 4°C with dispase (2 mg/ml; Sigma-Aldrich) to separate the epithelial and lower spinous layer. The tissues were minced into 1- to 3-mm2 fragments and digested at 37°C for 2 h in sterile PBS containing 4 mg/ml collagenase IV (Worthington Biochemical). The dissociated cell suspension was filtered through a 70-μm cell strainer (Falcon), plated on nontreated 10-cm petri dishes (VWR Scientific Products) with complete α-MEM (Invitrogen) containing 10% FBS (BD Clontech), 100 U/ml penicillin/100 μg/ml streptomycin (Invitrogen), 2 mM