[Tissue culture of infant corneal endothelial cells]

The authors report a new technique to culture infant corneal endothelial cells. 38 donor corneas were from sudden death infants aged from 5 days to 18 months. Corneal endothelial cells with Descemet's membrane were stripped from the stroma. After actions of trypsin, collagenase and hyaluronidase, the pure corneal endothelial cells were cultured at 35 degrees C, in 95% air and 5% CO2. The cells grew well without adding any mitogen in the tissue culture medium and attained confluency in 2-3 weeks, when they morphologically resembled natural corneal endothelium. With this technique, sufficient quantities of normal live cells become available for researches of human corneal endothelial cells.