ADVANTAGES OF ORGAN CULTURE

1. The explants remain comparable to the in vivo organs both in structure and function, which makes them more suitable than cell cultures for physiological studies.
2. The development of foetal organs in vitro is comparable to that in vivo. Hormone dependent organs remain so, while endocrine organs secrete the specific hormones.
3. Therefore, organ cultures provide information on the patterns of growth, differentiation and development, and on the influences of various factors on these features.
4. In some cases, organ cultures may replace whole animals in experimentation as the results from them are easier to interpret.
The results obtained with organ cultures usually give an idea of the in vivo events; this often reduces considerably the number of experiments necessary with whole animals to investigate a given problem.

LIMITATIONS:
Organ culture suffers from various limitations:
(1) Results from organ cultures are often not comparable to those from whole animal studies,
e.g. in studies on drug action, since the drugs are metabolized in vivo but not in vitro.
(2) Organ cultures can be maintained only for a few months. But it may be desirable to study the effects of certain factors for several months. In such cases, the organs treated in vitro may be transplanted into suitable host animals, e.g. nude mice.
It may be concluded that the results obtained with organ cultures usually give an idea of the in vivo events; this often reduces considerably the number of experiments necessary with whole animals to investigate a given problem.