Entrapment of primary human hepatocytes in extracellular matrix gels for long term toxicity studies

Introduction: During the last decade pharmaceutical companies aimed to develop strategies to reduce animal tests for drug screenings. Many of these new methods are based on the in vitro culture of primary human hepatocytes (hHeps), which rapidly lose their function under conventional culture conditions (2D). 3D cultures, mandatory to obtain their function, cannot be used for drug-testings due to their huge need for cells. Therefore, aim of this work was to develop culture system for hHeps that allows down-scaling for screening purposes.Materials and methods: Collagen was isolated from rat tails. hHeps were isola…