PSVI-7 Postmortem in Vitro Culture of Cells from Visceral Organs Stored at 4°C in Small Ruminants

Abstract

Abstract Exploration of cell viability and their regenerative capacity in postmortem tissues has a huge potential for tissue/organ transplantation and cell therapies in both human and animals. Proliferative stem cells have been recovered from refrigerated postmortem skin tissue in bovine, goat and sheep, and from ligaments in horses. However, it is not clearly known whether live and proliferative cells can be recovered from visceral organs that stay comparatively warmer than other tissues after death, and whether the recovery time can be extended after refrigeration of individual organs. To achieve this goal, six different organ tissues i.e. lung, heart, oviduct, liver, kidney and skin from goats were procured from slaughter house and stored in the laboratory at 4°C. Ten small sized (2-3mm2) explants from each of the five organs were then cultured in two 35mm dishes for each time point in DMEM media supplemented with 10% fetal bovine serum. The tissues were cultured on day 0, 3, 6, 9 and 12. The dishes were observed under inverted microscope and any explant exhibiting outgrowth of cells on day 10-12 of culture was considered positive. Our results exhibited outgrowth of cells around 3 (lung, oviduct, skin) of the 6 organs tested. Kidney, liver and heart tissues did not show any outgrowth. Interestingly, oviduct and skin, tissues exhibited outgrowth even after 9 days of postmortem storage in refrigerator, whereas lung tissues show growth only up to 6 days of storage. Experiments to test the cell survival limits on more animals of different age groups and characterization of recovered cells are underway.