High density tissue culture on microporous membranes perfused by blood: report of a new bioartificial system.

ABSTRACT

A new tissue culture system has been developed to support high density cell growth using the sheep as the host. Cellular nutrition is provided by plasma solutes as they diffuse from arterial blood across microporous polycarbonate membranes into a device attached to an arteriovenous shunt. Culture chambers are constructed with transparent polycarbonate to allow photomicroscopy of the tissue in situ. System performance is demonstrated by the high density growth of fetal sheep thymus allografts and rat soft tissue sarcoma xenografts.