Assessing the secretory capacity of pancreatic acinar cells

Pancreatic acinar cells produce and secrete digestive enzymes. These cells are organized as a cluster which forms and shares a joint lumen. This work demonstrates how the secretory capacity of these cells can be assessed by culture of isolated acini. The setup is advantageous since isolated acini, which retain many characteristics of the intact exocrine pancreas can be manipulated and monitored more readily than in the whole animal. Proper isolation of pancreatic acini is a key requirement so that the ex vivo culture will represent the in vivo nature of the acini. The protocol demonstrates how to isolate intact acini from the mouse pancreas. Subsequently, two complementary methods for evaluating pancreatic secretion are presented. The amylase secretion assay serves as a global measure, while direct imaging of pancreatic secretion allows the characterization of secretion at a sub-cellular resolution. Collectively, the techniques presented here enable a broad spectrum of experiments to study exocrine secretion.