CULTURES OF ORGANIZED TISSUES

An artificial organism, if one may so term it, composed of a complex of tissues, was cultivated for a long period of time. Small fragments of intestine from chick embryos 20 to 21 days old were placed in a suitable medium. The epithelium proliferated and completely covered the fragment of intestine after 4 to 6 days. A small body was thus formed, round or oblong in shape, surrounded by cylindrical epithelium and containing epithelial, connective, and muscle tissues, endothelium, and ameboid cells. After a month's cultivation in vitro, no necrosis had occurred. Therefore, it may be assumed that, through the intestinal epithelium, the medium supplied the intestinal tissue with sufficient nourishment. No uncontrolled proliferation took place after the epithelium bad surrounded the entire fragment. The cultivation of complex tissues will facilitate the study of the interactions of the different cells under various conditions. In some experiments, pure cultures of epithelial cells were grafted into such an "organism" without difficulty. The growth of malignant cells could be studied in the same way. When the "organism" was placed in a fluid medium, the epithelium remained normal but the stroma disappeared. It seems that plasma played an important rôle in the maintenance of the tissues in their normal condition.