Isolation and Culture of Porcine Corneal Cells

Permeation of a drug through the cornea may be studied in vitro by using either the excised cornea of slaughtered animals or an organotypic cornea construct [1]. To compare drug permeability data reported in the literature for excised porcine cornea [2] with those from cornea constructs, the cultivation of an organotypic porcine cornea is required. The porcine cornea consists of three major cell types : epithelium, stromal fibroblasts and endothelium (Figure 1). To develop a corneal tissue construct primary cultures of the three different cell types have to be established first. Many methods to obtain primary cultures of corneal cells from human, bovine or rabbit origin respectively have been reported, but only few references describe cultivation of porcine corneal cells [3,4]. The objective of the present contribution is to obtain primary cell cultures of porcine corneal cells and to study the growth and behavior of the cells in vitro.