Hardcore science bit

Today I learnt how to isolate pancreatic stellate cells from real live pancreas. Pancreatic stellate cells are probably a kind of pericyte, and are usually pretty hard to see in the normal pancreas. I think they might be relevant to cancer tho, so I'm going to have a bash at growing them with my tumour cells in the same dish and see how they affect each other. It's a bizarrely low-tech process: get pancreas (still nice and warm), mince it up a bit, strip the blood vessels and ducts out, fling it into some media and suck off the fat that floats to the top, bung in some enzymes to digest it a bit, then stick it through a very fine sieve to get pancreas soup... The next bit is kinda clever though.

There are several ways of separating out the cell type you want from a mixture of cells. Because the stellate cells contain globules of compounds called retinoids with a specific density, you can most easily separate them out from all of the other cell types in your pancreas soup by density-gradient sedimentation. Basically this involves a liquid with a density identical to that of this cell type and a liquid that is less dense. These are layered so that when you spin the soup in a centrifuge, everything EXCEPT the stellate cells sinks through the interface of the two liquids to the bottom and makes a pellet (because they are more dense than both solutions), whilst the stellate cells stay floating on top of the more dense liquid. All you need to do is suck off the cells floating in a fuzzy band at the interface and BINGO. It's very impressive if you are me, honest.

So now I just have to hope they grow! I'm feeling all maternal.

Hardcore science bit

Today I learnt how to isolate pancreatic stellate cells from real live pancreas. Pancreatic stellate cells are probably a kind of pericyte, and are usually pretty hard to see in the normal pancreas. I think they might be relevant to cancer tho, so I'm going to have a bash at growing them with my tumour cells in the same dish and see how they affect each other. It's a bizarrely low-tech process: get pancreas (still nice and warm), mince it up a bit, strip the blood vessels and ducts out, fling it into some media and suck off the fat that floats to the top, bung in some enzymes to digest it a bit, then stick it through a very fine sieve to get pancreas soup... The next bit is kinda clever though.

There are several ways of separating out the cell type you want from a mixture of cells. Because the stellate cells contain globules of compounds called retinoids with a specific density, you can most easily separate them out from all of the other cell types in your pancreas soup by density-gradient sedimentation. Basically this involves a liquid with a density identical to that of this cell type and a liquid that is less dense. These are layered so that when you spin the soup in a centrifuge, everything EXCEPT the stellate cells sinks through the interface of the two liquids to the bottom and makes a pellet (because they are more dense than both solutions), whilst the stellate cells stay floating on top of the more dense liquid. All you need to do is suck off the cells floating in a fuzzy band at the interface and BINGO. It's very impressive if you are me, honest.

So now I just have to hope they grow! I'm feeling all maternal.