Apr 15, 2023

Generation of stable cell lines using retroviral system

  • 1Laboratory of Michael Lazarou, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Parkville, Victoria, Australia
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Protocol Citationnguyen.tha 2023. Generation of stable cell lines using retroviral system. protocols.io https://dx.doi.org/10.17504/protocols.io.81wgbyez1vpk/v1
License: This is an open access  protocol  distributed under the terms of the  Creative Commons Attribution License,  which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited
Protocol status: Working
We use this protocol and it's working
Created: April 10, 2023
Last Modified: April 15, 2023
Protocol  Integer ID: 80233
Keywords: stable cell lines, retroviral system, using retroviral system, retroviral system this protocol details generation, generation of stable cell line, stable cell line, cell line
Abstract
This protocol details generation of stable cell lines using retroviral system.
Attachments
Guidelines
Attention

  • The HEK293T cells detach very easily, be extra gentle when changing the media.

Materials
Buffers and reagents:

  • Polybrene (4 mg/mL)

Growth media:
AB
DMEM with 10% FBS
Glucose4.5 g/l
GlutaMAXTM1x
MEM NEAA1x
HEPES25 mM
45% D-( )-GlucoseMerck MilliporeSigma (Sigma-Aldrich)Catalog #G8769

GlutaMAX™ SupplementThermo FisherCatalog #35050061

MEM Non-Essential Amino Acids Solution (100X)Thermo Fisher ScientificCatalog #11140050

HEPES Buffer 1M Solution Cell Culture Grade MP BiomedicalsFisher ScientificCatalog #ICN1688449

Lipofectamine™ LTX Reagent with PLUS™ ReagentThermo FisherCatalog #A12621

Gibco™ Opti-MEM™ I Reduced Serum Medium no phenol redFisher ScientificCatalog #11-058-021

Millex-HV Syringe Filter Unit 0.45 µm PVDF 33 mm gamma-sterilizable sterilizedMerck MilliporeSigma (Sigma-Aldrich)Catalog #SLHVM33RS


Safety warnings
Attention

  • All viral waste must be bleached and left under UV light for at least 30’ after viral work in TC hoods before disposal.
Day 1
Seed NIH HEK293T cells into a 6-well plate (900k cells/well if set up in the morning, 950k cells/well if set up in the afternoon).
Note
Set up 1 well for each construct you wish to generate a virus harvest for, can be scaled up according to your need.

Day 2: The following protocol is designed for one well of the 6-well plate
Transfect cells with viral and helper vectors using lipofectamine LTX. Combine the following in a 1.5 mL tube:
AB
viral vector construct (pBMN, pBABE or pMX) containing cDNA of interest1.5 µg
gag-pol vector1.0 µg (amount for 1 well)
VSV-G vector0.5 µg (amount for 1 well)
Opti-MEM (RT)500 µL
Add 3 µL of Plus reagent and mix well. Incubate at Room temperature for 00:05:00 .
5m
Add 9 µL of Lipofectamin LTX (1:3 ratio of Plus:LTX is standard in the lab but can be adjusted for your own protocol) and vortex for 00:00:15 . Incubate at Room temperature for 00:20:00 .

20m 15s
Once the 20 min incubation starts, replace the media in each well with 1 mL DMEM/10% FBS media.
When the 20 min incubation finishes, add the optimum/liposome mix to the well.
Note
Do it gently on the side of the well.

Day 3
In the morning, remove the old media from the HEK293T cells which may contain viruses at this stage) into a beaker of beach and add 1 mL of fresh growth media. The next day, viruses can be harvested for infection.

Seed the target cells (about 100k-120k cells) into a 6-well plate if intending to do infection with fresh viruses.
Day 4
In the late afternoon, collect viral supernatant from HEK293Ts, spin down at max speed for 00:05:00 to pellet debris and filter through 0.45µm syringe filters. Viral particles can freshly be used for infection on the cells plated out on day 3 (see below) or can be frozen at -80 °C for future use.

5m
For second harvest, add 1.5 mL fresh growth media back to HEK293T cells for 2 days and harvest again (on Day 6).
For infection, harvested viruses are topped up with fresh growth media to make up a total of 2 mL .
Aspirate the media from the target cells.
Add the 2 mL of virus-containing media (from step 3) to the target cells. Add polybrene to a final concentration of 8 µg/mL to the well and mix well.
Days 5 and 6
The viruses can be removed from the cells into a beaker of bleach after 24 h (Day 5) or 48 h (Day 6) and fresh media can be added to the wells.
All waste must be treated as viral waste for at least 3 media changes over 3 days post-infection.