, 2012 and Tuschl et al., 2009). In this respect 3D liver culture appears to be a more suitable model than hepatocytes sandwich cultures for drug metabolism studies over long periods of time. In our study we normalized the obtained data from the functional characterization of the cells to the number of the plated hepatocytes and the amount of secreted albumin, since we wanted to study the stability selleck products of the culture over time and therefore performed serial measurements out of the same culture well. We were aware that this type of normalization of our data can potentially cause
errors coming from the fact that e.g. not 100% of the cells will adhere to the scaffold after seeding and some of the cells will be detached/dead from the tissues over time of culture. Therefore, to overcome this problem, all the results NU7441 in vivo obtained were normalized relative to the time-matched controls within one experiment performed on the same 3D liver culture. Using immunochistochemistry we confirmed that the different hepatic cell types, including hepatocytes, Kupffer cells, HSC and endothelial cells are present in 30-day-old human 3D liver cultures, with a sustained ratio between PC/NPC of 60%/40% similar to the cell proportions found in the original liver tissue
(Dash et al., 2009). Kupffer cells represented 12.5% of NPC, leading to the conclusion that HSC and endothelial cells may account for ~ 27.5% of NPC in a 30-day-old human culture. These cell proportions are very similar to the physiologically cell proportions in BCKDHA the native liver (Dash et al., 2009). Confocal microscopy of the 3D liver tissues after immunohistochemistry with cell type specific markers demonstrated
that the greatest portion of NPC such as Kupffer cells, HSC and endothelial cells were localized on the bottom of the tissue, whereas the hepatocytes were found mainly in the upper tissue layers. This was not surprising given the fact that NPC were seeded first on the scaffold following inoculation of hepatocytes one week later. We demonstrated that 3D liver cells, similarly to other cell culture models such as hepatocyte-sandwich cultures form bile canalicili-like structures when grown on the 3D nylon scaffold (Tuschl et al., 2009). The function of bile canaliculi is the collection and transportation of the bile secreted by hepatocytes into the biliary tree, the gall bladder and the small intestine for the emulsification of dietary fat and lipophilic vitamins (Tuschl et al., 2009). To find out whether the HSC in the 3D liver tissue have quiescent or activated phenotype, we performed immunochistochemistry analysis using alpha-smooth muscle actin (α-SMA) antibody, a marker of activated-HSC (data not shown). We found no tissue staining using α-SMA antibody, demonstrating that HSC in the 3D liver model were in quiescent state.