Development and characterization of an immortalized nasopharyngeal epithelial cell line to explore airway physiology and pathology in yak (Bos grunniens)

Airway epithelial cells play a crucial role in investigating the physiological and pathological mechanisms of the respiratory tract in yaks, a species whose unique respiratory system has garnered extensive interest. Despite this growing interest, there currently are no available airway epithelial cell lines from yaks, underscoring the crucial need to establish a yak respiratory epithelial cell line. Therefore, our objective was to isolate a population of primary yak nasopharyngeal epithelial cells (pYNE) and transform them into immortalized yak nasopharyngeal epithelial cells (iYNE), assessing their suitability as an