In foetal axial skeleton development, notochord undergoes condensation and segments to form the primitive nucleus pulposus (NP) composing of notochordal cells (NCs). Albeit putative NC molecular markers: brachyury (TBXT) and cytokeratin 8 (KRT8) have been reported to be depleted with age and intervertebral disc (IVD) degeneration, animal studies indicated that a proportion of notochordal-derived cells could persist in adulthood. By understanding the ontogenetic, cellular and molecular characteristics of NCs is pivotal to the successful development of cell replacement therapies and IVD regeneration However, the lack of an expandable NC model in the field has limited in-depth studies on human NP cell biology.. Recently, a conditional immortalization in relying on lentiviral vectors and the doxycycline-controlled expression of SV40LT in human foetal atrial myocytes was developed for immortalization of cells in generation of in vitro models of atrial myocytes. We hypothesized that a primitive human NC cell line can be established