Isolation of Rat Portal Fibroblasts by In situ Liver Perfusion

Liver fibrosis is defined by the excessive deposition of extracellular matrix by activated myofibroblasts. There are multiple precursors of hepatic myofibroblasts, including hepatic stellate cells, portal fibroblasts and bone marrow derived fibroblasts (1). Hepatic stellate cells have been the best studied, but portal fibroblasts are increasingly recognized as important contributors to the myofibroblast pool, particularly in biliary fibrosis (2). Portal fibroblasts undergo proliferation in response to biliary epithelial injury, potentially playing a key role in the early stages of biliary scarring (3-5). A method of isolating portal fibroblasts would allow in vitro study of this cell population and lead to greater understanding of the role portal fibroblasts play in biliary fibrosis. Portal fibroblasts have been isolated using various techniques including outgrowth (6, 7) and liver perfusion with enzymatic digestion followed by size selection (8). The advantage of the digestion and size selection technique compared to the outgrowth technique is that cells can be studied without the necessity of passage in culture. Here, we describe a modified version of the original technique described by Kruglov and Dranoff (8) for isolation of portal fibroblasts from rat liver that results in a relatively pure population of primary cells.