Chapter 7 Primary Cultures of Human Prostate

Abstract

The chapter assesses the methods and media used and discusses some of the problems related to primary cultures of human prostate. The three main techniques available are outgrowth culture, epithelial suspension culture, and organ culture. Normal human prostate are maintained in cell culture but the epithelial cells that survive, are stem cells not fully differentiated and respond to normal stimuli. These cells may be valuable for studies on growth. The problems involved in culture of normal human prostate are the same as those using any other tissue. The general problem of maintenance of differentiated cells in vitro is not unique to the normal human prostate but also applies to the mouse, rat, and guinea pig prostate, and to most other organs and specie. For small scale studies the spillage method used by Lecher and others seems to produce clones of cells. For large scale work the systems devised by McLimans, steady state or microcarrier spin filter suspension, are the only methods available.