[Mitotic activity of rabbit corneal epithelium in vitro]

It is difficult to maintain corneal epithelial cells for several passages in culture. At a first step to establish a culture system for corneal epithelium, the authors evaluated factors which seemed to be involved in the growth kinetics and mitotic activity of rabbit corneal epithelium in vitro. First of all, to compare the growth kinetics of peripheral and central epithelium, we measured the areas and distances of the epithelium that outgrew from peripheral and central explants in culture. The peripheral corneal epithelium grew 1.2-to 1.6-fold better than the central corneal epithelium. However, there was no significant difference between them. Secondly, we evaluated the effects of epidermal growth factor (EGF), cholera toxin (CTX) and insulin, which were contained in supplemented hormonal epithelial medium (SHEM) developed by Jumblatt et al, on the mitotic activity of rabbit corneal epithelium. Among these drugs, only EGF had the ability to increase the epithelial cell number after 10 days of incubation. By contrast, CTX which elevated the level of cyclic AMP inhibited the proliferation of the epithelium.