Organotypic slice culture is a technique that involves growing thin slices of living tissue in vitro under controlled conditions. It is an important tool in neuroscience and cell biology research, allowing scientists to study the structure and function of neural circuits in a more physiologically relevant context than traditional cell culture. Tissue sections are required for organotypic slice culture as they provide a thin and flat sample that can be easily sliced and cultured in vitro. Without tissue sections, it would be difficult to isolate and culture specific regions of interest, making it challenging to study neural circuits in a controlled environment.
Organotypic cultured slices preserve the 3D cytoarchitecture of cell populations, and are an accessible system that allows for short- and long-term experimental manipulations. Thus, organotypic slice cultures, especially brain slice cultures for neuroscience, have become an outstanding tool in physiology research.
Because organotypic slice cultures mean that tissue slices must be incubated in media and kept alive outside of the animal model, the survival of cells is the most important criterion to consider. For brain slices, neuron viability is crucial to allow for patch-clamp electrophysiology. Organotypic brain slices need to have a high ratio of viable neurons within the top few cellular layers that can be patch-clamped with ease. The process of cutting brain slices also needs to occur rapidly, to prevent neuron death before incubation of cultured slices. Therefore, the process requires a vibratome that can quickly make high quality acute brain slices without shearing neurons on the surface.
Not sure which model is right for your needs?
The Smyth Laboratory, led by James Smyth, Ph.D., studies cardiomyopathy at a subcellular level, searching for potential targets for therapeutic interventions to help restore normal cardiac function to diseased hearts. Here, Dr. Smyth shows how to section live myocardial slices with the Compresstome®, and uses them for tissue culture and calcium imaging.
Dr Astero Klampatsa (PhD) is a Team Leader in Cancer Immunotherapy at the Institute of Cancer Research, London, UK and a Senior Lecturer in King’s College London, UK. She focuses on developing novel CAR T cell therapies for mesothelioma and lung cancer, as well as the immunobiology of these malignancies for identification of markers of response to immunotherapy. In this webinar, Dr. Klampatsa will discuss how the Compresstome® was used to create precision-cut tumor slices (PCTS) as an ex vivo model for immunotherapy research.
Visikol is a contract research services company focused on leveraging advanced imaging, 3D cell culture assays and digital pathology to accelerate the drug discovery and development process. In this webinar, Visikol explains the need for in vitro liver models to study livery injury. They demonstrate the standard assay format for creating precision-cut liver slices (PCLS), and explain how the Compresstome® VF-310-0Z vibrating microtome helps create uniform tissue slices that can be meaningfully compared between treatments. Visikol goes through how to use the Compresstome® step-by-step for making PCLS.
Dr. Tsilingiri is working on tumor immunotherapy and using the Compresstome vibrating microtome to examine the interaction between tumor tissues and autologous lymph node cells in slice cultures. This work is being carried out in the frame of an EU-funded Consortium, Tumour-LNoC (Tumour-Lymph node on a chip), with the ultimate goal of mimicking the metastatic process on a chip and monitor metastasizing cells in real time.
Gavert N, Zwang Y, Weiser R, Greenberg O, Halperin S, Jacobi O, Mallel G, Sandler O, Berger AJ, Stossel E, Rotin D, Grinshpun A, Kamer I, Bar J, Pines G, Saidian D, Bar I, Golan S, Rosenbaum E, Nadu A, Ben-Ami E, Weitzen R, Nechushtan H, Golan T, Brenner B, Nissan A, Margalit O, Hershkovitz D, Lahat G, Straussman R. Ex vivo organotypic cultures for synergistic therapy prioritization identify patient-specific responses to combined MEK and Src inhibition in colorectal cancer. Nat Cancer. 2022 Feb;3(2):219-231. Epub 2022 Feb 10. PMID: 35145327. Download PDF
Greier MDC, Runge A, Dudas J, Carpentari L, Schartinger VH, Randhawa A, Mayr M, Petersson M, Riechelmann H. Optimizing culturing conditions in patient derived 3D primary slice cultures of head and neck cancer. Front Oncol. 2023 Mar 30;13:1145817. PMID: 37064104; PMCID: PMC10101142. Download PDF
Ruiz-Garcia H, Zarco N, Watanabe F, De Araujo Farias V, Suarez-Meade P, Guerrero-Cazares H, Imitola J, Quinones-Hinojosa A, Trifiletti D. Development of Experimental Three-Dimensional Tumor Models to Study Glioblastoma Cancer Stem Cells and Tumor Microenvironment. Methods Mol Biol. 2023;2572:117-127. PMID: 36161412. Download PDF
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