Chapter 12 Organ Culture of Normal Human Bladder: Choice of Starting Material and Culture Characteristics

Publisher Summary The chapter discusses the assessment and selection of suitable normal human bladder tissue from available patients and describes the characteristics of short-term (35 days) cultures. Several bladder carcinogens, some of which are epidemiologically implicated in the induction of human bladder tumors are identified and studied in animal model. The chapter works on human bladder designed to develop an in vitro model in which the process of carcinogenesis is studied and the predictive tests of environmental chemicals are made on the human target tissue. Organ cultures rather than cell cultures have been selected as a basis for this model because normal urothelial cell differentiation cannot be maintained in cell culture. The main advantage of using organ cultures is the maintenance of a normal three-dimensional relationship both within the urothelium and between the epithelium and its supporting stroma. Cell cultures derived from organ cultures allow chromosomal studies to be made and markers of neoplasia associated with cell growth, such as the ability to grow in semisolid agar or in suspension, to be assessed.