Microcarrier culture of neonatal cardiac myocytes in metabolic studies

Using a new method of culturing neonatal rat heart muscle cells on collagen coated Sephadex microspheres the culture showed increasing biomass for 72 h, at which time 44% of the cells were myocytes. At 24 h after inoculation 63% of the cells were myocytes, and from 48 h onwards they were beating spontaneously. The cell yield was sufficient for metabolite determination by enzymatic cycling and fluorometric methods. The ease of manipulation of the cells on the microspheres gives this method considerable potential for studies of compartmentation, biosynthesis, and secretion in cardiac myocytes.