Establishment of lung cancer stable cell lines expressing wild type and mutant EGFR genes

A retroviral system was used for transfection of EGFR genes into A549 lung cancer cells. In brief, pBabe-puro vectors (Addgene, Cambridge, MA) containing the cDNA of wild type EGFR and mutant EGFRs (delE746-A750 in exon 19, and L858R in exon 21) were transfected into HEK 293 Phoenix ampho packaging cells (ATCC, Manassas, VA) using Fu-GENE6 transfection reagent (Roche, Lewes, UK). The supernatant was collected for transduction of retrovirus into A549 lung cancer cells 48 hours after transfection. After being selected with puromycin for 3 weeks, the remaining cell colonies were amplified and checked for EGFR expression and used for further analysis.