Cardiac Muscle with Controlled Geometry

Heart cells in tissue culture have served as an experimental preparation for nearly 70 years (Burrows, 1912). However, the unique advantages of the preparations for physiological studies became evident after Moscona (1952) succeeded in using the proteolytic enzyme, trypsin, to obtain suspensions of embryonic cells. Isolated heart cells, contained within an appropriate culture medium, could then be introduced to glass or plastic substrates at densities sufficient to promote the formation of either monolayer or relatively thin multilayer preparations that were suitable for electrophysiological (Fange et al., 1952; Crill et al., 1959) and ion-transport (Burrows and Lamb, 1962) studies. In 1954, a conference was held, jointly sponsored by the New York Academy of Sciences and the Tissue Culture Association, to explore the utilization of tissue culture in pharmacology (Pomerat, 1954). Although at the time, it was believed that tissue culture had much to offer the study of drug action, recognition was given to the fact that tissue culture was not yet amenable to quantitative determinations.