ORGAN CULTURE AND HISTOTYPIC CULTURES

The cell-cell interaction leads to a multistep events in in vivo situations. For example, hormone stimulation of fibroblasts is responsible for the release of surfactant by the lung alveolar cells. Androgen binding to stomal cells stimulates the prostrate epithelium. In other words, hormones, nutritional factors and xenobiotics exert stimulating effects on the cells to function in a coordinated manner. Xenobiotics broadly refers to the unnatural, foreign, and synthetic chemicals such as pesticides, herbicides, refrigents, solvents and other organic compounds. It is impossible to study these cellular interactions that occur in the in vivo system with isolated cells or cells in culture. This has lead to the attempts to develop organ and histotypic culture with the aim of creating in vitro models comparable to the in vivo system. The three types of such cultures are:  

(a)      Organ culture- In this type of culture, the whole organs or small fragments of the organs with their special and intrinsic properties intact are used in culture.

(b) Histotypic culture- The cell lines grown in three dimensional matrix to high density represent histotypic cultures

(c) Organotypic cultures- A component of an organ is created by using cells from different lineages in proper ratio and spatial relationship under laboratory conditions.