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Abstract Human ovarian surface epithelium cell culture systems were developed much earlier to study the biology of epithelial cells. Human ovarian surface epithelium cell cultures have been set up mostly in order to study the anti-inflammatory and proliferative responses of ovarian surface epithelium cells and to elucidate the mechanisms of ovarian cancer formation. During the last few years, there have also been more reports on the human ovarian surface epithelium stemness, that is, on the epithelial-mesenchymal transitions.An aspect of normal ovarian surface epithelium function is regeneration and repeated cell proliferation after ovulations during the reproductive period of life. Ovarian surface epithelium has also been confirmed as a source of oocytes during the embryonic/fetal period of life in humans as based on micro anatomical studies by electron microscopy. In a similar way as for fetal ovaries the adult ovarian surface epithelium has also been proposed as a source of oocytes early in the history of the reproductive physiology. Some experimental evidence has been brought by Bukovsky and his co-workers who scraped the ovarian surface epithelium in postmenopausal women, set up a cell culture from the scrapings, and confirmed the presence of oocyte-like cells which developed in vitro. |