Skin and Arthritis Cell Models

Normal dermal fibroblast cell line (BJ, CRL-2522) and chondrosarcoma cell line (SW1353, HTB-94) were purchased from American Type Culture Collection. Dermal fibroblasts have been previously used in investigations of borrelial infection (Georgilis et al., 1992 (link)). Furthermore, the use of chondrosarcoma cells in osteoarthritis research is well documented (Chen et al., 2017 (link); Liu et al., 2017 (link)). Therefore, these cell lines, BJ and SW1353, were utilized for their relevance as a disease-related model for skin manifestations and arthritis, respectively. The SW1353 cells were grown at +37°C with 100% air in Leibovitz’s L-15 media (Sigma), while the BJ cells were at +37°C, 5% CO₂ in Eagle’s minimum essential media (Sigma) as instructed by the manufacturers. Both media were supplemented with 10% fetal bovine serum (Gibco), 2 mM L-glutamine (Gibco), and 100 IU/ml penicillin/0.2 mg/ml streptomycin (Gibco) antibiotic cocktail. Sodium pyruvate (1 mM, Gibco) was also added to the BJ media.