Resources for choosing a cell line

[Tom Anderson]

Hi,

Are there any resources out there to help with choosing a cell line for an
experiment?

For example, i'd like to do some experiments with epithelial cells;
ideally, they'd be human, properly polarised, and not too transformed (and
i don't want to get into primary cultures yet). However, i don't know
which cell line i should use for this; HeLa is too screwed up, MDCK and
CHO aren't human, MCF-7 or HEP G2 aren't too bad but are cancer lines, and
i can't think of any others off the top of my head.

The only sources of information i know of that i can turn to are the
ATCC/ECACC catalogues (which are are focused on the lines rather than the
applications) and word of mouth and literature searches, both of which are
a bit haphazard. Any other suggestions?

Thanks,
tom

-- 
Tom Anderson, MRC Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology, UCL