Tissue Culture of A2 Cell-rich Pancreatic Islets Isolated from Guinea Pigs

Tissue culture of pancreatic B cells has been a matter of increasing interest during recent years and a number of problems related to the biosynthesis and release of insulin are now being approached with the aid of this technique (1-8) . By comparison, little is known about the behavior in tissue culture of the At and A 2 cells, mainly because of the small number of these cells in normal mammalian islets . The recent introduction of techniques for production of A 2 cellrich islets in guinea pigs (9, 10) and for tissue culture of intact, isolated islets (11) seems, however, to have opened up new possibilities for a close study of the structure and metabolism of the glucagon-producing A2 cells during prolonged culture in vitro (12) . In the present investigation, isolated A 2 cellrich islets were maintained in culture for up to 6 days and then investigated with regard to both light and electron microscopical appearance, glucagon content, glucagon release, and rate of oxygen consumption. It was found that after the culture period the A2 cells exhibited an excellent morphologic preservation and retained a number of their characteristic metabolic responses .