Cryopreservation of embryonic chick myogenic lineage-committed stem cells

Undifferentiated embryonic chick stem cells provide a good in vitro test system to examine the effects of recombinant growth factors on the resultant phenotypic expression of these cells. One of the major difficulties in using freshly isolated cells is variation in the proportion of stem cells recovered from different cell harvests. Variation is of particular concern when multiple cell harvests are necessary to provide cells for assaying a single growth factor. As an attempt to minimize this variation, we have examined the efficacy of cryopreserving myogenic lineage-committed stem cells derived from embryonic chick leg muscle. Percent recovery, viability, differentiation morphology, and cellular proliferation rates were compared between sister cultures of freshly isolated and cryopreserved stem cells. Embryonic chick stem cells retained their capacity to differentiate myogenically in culture when slowly frozen in and recovered from 7.5% dimethyl sulfoxide medium supplemented with horse serum and stage-specific embryo extract.