Chapter 17 Organ Culture of Gastric Mucosa: Advantages and Limitations

Publisher Summary The chapter describes early experience with organ culture of gastric tissue, to indicate ways in which the technique has been used to study gastric function, and to point out the kinds of investigations that are needed in the future. In recent years, in vitro techniques have been increasingly applied in efforts to examine gastric mucosal function under more rigidly controlled conditions. The chapter discusses methods for organ culture of fetal stomach, adult fundic mucosa, and adult antral mucosa. Although organ culture substantially lengthens the time during which steady state conditions can be maintained in vitro , this approach as currently applied also has distinct limitations. First, current methodology does not permit investigators to distinguish secretion from the mucosal surface of cultured explants as opposed to secretion from the serosal surface. The second limitation is the fact that the technique is not practical for directly assessing the secretion of hydrochloric acid, a major function of oxyntic mucosa. Another difficulty is that, unlike standard cell culture techniques, the organ culture method does not permit addition of exogenous cells such as lymphocytes, which can then come into direct contact with the cultured explants.