Background: Tumour necrosis factor-a (TNF-a) is a pleiotropic pro-inflammatory cytokine, which is rapidly upregulated in the brain after injury. TNF-a acts by binding to its receptors, TNF-R1 (p55) and TNF-R2 (p75), on the cell surface. The aim of this study was first to investigate if there is altered expression of TNF-a and TNF-a receptors in cerebral artery walls following global or focal is...

AIMS To determine the epithelial proliferative capacity of organ cultured limbal tissue and correlate this with various donor and eye banking factors. METHODS 24 corneoscleral limbal (CSL) rims left over from penetrating keratoplasty were split in half and set up as in vitro explant cultures. Corneal epithelial proliferative potential (CEPP) was assessed by the number of "cycles" of growth ac...

The pancreas is an essential organ that regulates glucose homeostasis and secretes digestive enzymes. Research on pancreas embryogenesis has led to the development of protocols to produce pancreatic cells from stem cells (1). The whole embryonic organ can be cultured at multiple stages of development (2-4). These culture methods have been useful to test drugs and to image developmental processe...

Organ culture developed about 50 years ago, mainly for the study of morphogenesis in embryological tissue. Fell and co-workers in Cambridge studied many embryological events in vitro (Fell, 1940), and organ culture came to be defined as that type of culture where complete rudiments or fragments of organs were cultivated with a minimum of outgrowth and enlarged as a whole (Fell, 1953; Parker, 19...