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Increasingly, research suggests that for certain systems, animal models are insufficient for human toxicology testing. The development of robust, in vitro models of human toxicity is required to decrease our dependence on potentially misleading in vivo animal studies. A critical de ...

Cryopreservation of hepatocytes is important for use both in research and for clinical application in hepatocyte transplantation. Cryopreservation causes damage to hepatocytes with the result that cell viability and function is reduced on thawing compared to fresh cells. There a ...

The basics of in situ hybridization have been widely applied to a diverse range of situations where we need to localize the distribution of nucleic acids. Advances in other molecular techniques such as the advent of gene microarrays has not diminished the significance of in situ hybridization, ...

Leukocytes mediate some forms of glomerulonephritis, particularly severe proliferative and crescentic forms. The renal glomerulus is one of the few sites within the microvasculature in which leukocyte recruitment occurs in capillaries. However, due to the difficulty of direct ...

Quantitative gene expression analysis is fundamental to many experimental protocols and hypothesis testing in scientific research. The most popular currently used method to measure the expression level of specific genes in biological samples is real-time quantitative polym ...

Kidney tissue laser capture microdissection (LCM) is of great clinical relevance since genome wide studies on total kidney messenger RNA (mRNA) potentially miss important factors involved in the pathogenesis of the disease in glomeruli and tubules. This technique is readily applic ...

Glomerular filtration rate (GFR) is an important index of renal function and routinely used in patient care and basic research to evaluate progression of renal diseases or test the efficacy of novel therapeutic strategies. Determination of GFR in mouse models has been mostly practiced in an ...

Small synthetic interfering RNA duplexes (siRNAs) can selectively suppress gene expression in somatic mammalian cells without the nonselective toxic effects associated with double-stranded RNA (dsRNA). However, in vivo delivery of siRNA targeting the kidney has been describ ...

Protein profiling has numerous applications in renal research including the detection of protein biomarkers with aberrant expression levels during disease development. Such information is essential for early diagnosis and will aid the improvement of patient management and m ...

Fibrosis and sclerosis are widely recognized as hallmarks of progressive renal disease and are caused by the excessive accumulation of connective tissue, mostly collagen. The detection of collagen content, concentration (collagen content/dry weight tissue), and sub-types from ...

The investigation of the effects of mechanical stretch on mesangial cells can provide important insights into glomerular pathophysiology related to increased intraglomerular pressure (Pgc). Elevated Pgc, leading to the transmission of abnormal mechanical stress to reside ...

The pathology of progressive renal disease is characterized by glomerular and interstitial inflammation, glomerulosclerosis, and tubulointerstitial fibrosis. This is a consequence of excessive matrix synthesis, reduced matrix degradation, and contraction (reorga ...

The need for identification of specific modes of cell death, like apoptosis and necrosis, is driven by their detrimental or beneficial effect in different forms of disease, and the need in many instances of disease to modulate their levels. Apoptosis, an organized, gene-driven, and often energ ...

Immunohistochemistry for pimonidazole adducts serves to define hypoxia within tissues. For this purpose, pimonidazole is delivered in vivo, binds to thiol groups at oxygen tensions below 10 mmHg, and is visualized with help of commercially available anti-pimonidazole antibodi ...

The combination of histochemical techniques and electron microscopy is a powerful tool to study the mechanisms and pathology of renal disease. Through the use of electron-dense markers such as colloidal gold, biologists are able to localize immune deposits, cellular receptors, and ex ...

Histochemistry is a basic technique in the analysis of cell and tissue biology. Advances in staining techniques have provided the resolving power necessary to study complex organ structures such as the kidney. In this chapter we detail standard histochemical techniques used in our labor ...

Animal models of renal disease have provided valuable insights into the pathogenesis of acute and chronic kidney disease. Extension of these models to the mouse has become an increasingly important with the development of gene knockout and transgenic animals. In this review we discuss a ran ...

In this chapter we describe a reliable and reproducible method for the selective propagation and culture of renal fibroblasts derived from explantation of renal cortical tissue in vitro. The chapter outlines how primary renal interstitial fibroblasts are derived from explants gro ...

Primary cultures of renal proximal tubule cells (PTC) have been widely used to investigate tubule cell function. They provide a model system where confounding influences of renal haemodynamics, cell heterogeneity, and neural activity are eliminated. Additionally they are likely to ...

Cultures of glomerular mesangial cells (MC) of rodent or human origin have been extensively employed in renal research laboratories since the early 1980s. Cultured MC retain extensive analogies with the fairly undifferentiated in vivo phenotype of an intercapillary mesenchymal c ...