A Good Breath of Oxygen for Beta-Like Cells Obtained From Porcine Exocrine Pancreatic Tissue

Ischemia is the most important factor that affects organ survival during harvesting. Thetwo-layer method (TLM) is one of several cold storage solutions that seeks to preserveorgans and cells avoiding in vivo and in vitro ischemia. We compared the retrieval ofbeta-like elements from exocrine pancreatic cells using TLM versus University ofWisconsin (UW) solutions. For this purpose pancreata laparoscopically harvested from 20female pigs were preserved in UW solution or TLM before digestion. The resultingexocrine cells were divided into 2 groups: the first was cultured in a designed medium to allow differentiation into beta-like cells and the second was cryopreserved before thedifferentiation process at 196°C for 8 weeks before culture in the same medium. Theresults revealed that TLM was better than UW as a preservation solution in terms ofbeta-cell viability and insulin secretion. We suggest that the use of TLM solution allows one to obtain less damaged cells for research purposes.