Cell cultures from cryopreserved renal biopsies and other tissue samples

Answering questions regarding research or clinical aspects, histological and histochemical examinations of tissue specimens are playing an increasing role. The same is true for cell cultures obtained from organ specimens. In most cases, tissue samples are obtained only once and have to be examined immediately. This is often impracticable and therefore, it is necessary to store tissue samples or cells from established cell cultures so as to be able to continue examinations at a later time. Very rare reports exist on the preservation of tissue for performing cell culture examinations and they exclusively refer to tumour tissue and bone marrow, but not to normal organ tissue and biopsy samples. Therefore, in this study cell cultures from several organs have been prepared immediately after obtaining the tissue and compared with those established after cryopreservation several months later. The tissue specimens were obtained from rats (kidney, skin, heart) and from humans (kidney, placenta) or were biopsy specimens from the kidney and skin. From all these cryopreparations, typical cells were cultured. There was no significant difference in the mean population doubling time (MPD) and regarding morphological cell criteria between cell cultures obtained from fresh tissue samples after biopsy and those prepared several months after cryopreservation. There was nearly the same ratio between most cell types present in the tissue. From these results we can conclude that in the examined organs cells from cryopreserved tissue can be cultured even months or more than one year later. At least, these results make it possible to answer new questions and repeat different experiments at any time.