Isolation of primary cell populations is complex and requires a significant amount of technical expertise to produce purified and viable cultures. JHU scientists have developed an optimized method to produce a highly purified population of mammalian intrapulmonary vein smooth muscle cells (SMC). This method is a multi-step, multi-enzyme procedure that produces a cell population exhibiting characteristic SMC marker proteins and function. This method is advantageous because it saves laboratory personnel significant time and supplies that would be necessary to adapt and optimize known cell isolation methods to produce a culture of intrapulmonary vein smooth muscle cells. This isolation method is an advancement over known primary cell isolation techniques because it produces a specific population of venous SMC that have physiological properties that are distinct even from SMC isolated from adjacent structures.
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This method produces a population of primary venous SMC that exhibit unique physiological properties, high viability and growth. The primary cells can then be used for a variety of physiological assays to study hypertension or hypoxia, for example.
