Hepatocyte Immobilization in Agarose and Functional Integrity Testing

Isolated liver cells are extensively used in various studies and find wide applications in the fields of biochemistry, physiology, molecular biology, pharmacotoxicology, testing chemical pollutants, mutagenicity, carcinogenicity, and in other biomedical studies. The importance of this experimental cellular model stems from the fact that it is an intermediate system between the whole animal model or the isolated perfused liver on one side, and those systems of isolated subcellular organelles or solubilized enzymes on the other side (1 ). Freshly isolated hepatocytes, primary cultures of hepatocytes, and clonal cell lines are examples of well established cellular models. Certainly, experiments on these hepatocyte models have contributed significantly to our understanding of liver biology and pathophysiology. Nevertheless, the routinely used hepatocyte cellular models have the drawback of being metabolically less active and may be described as static. This is because such systems suffer from hypoxia and waste product buildup that adversely affect cell physiology (2 ,3 ). Consequently, the development of a perfusion method for the heptocytes that normalizes the processes of oxygenation and waste removal is of prime importance.