Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

What can I do to grow beta cells ?

Hi Mackin69,

What are you planning to do with these beta cells? Do you have the resources available to you to actually grow these cells (i.e. cell culture media, tissue culture dishes/flasks, a 37 degree incubator, biosafety hood, etc.)? For example, do you have access to any science labs and do they have the equipment necessary for the tissue culture work? If there are science labs in the vicinity of where you live who work on beta cells, I think it would be a great idea to contact them and see if they will be willing to help you with beta cell culturing--I am sure they will have much better insight than I do on what experimental systems work best for your project idea.

I've done a little searching and I found some articles in regards to growing these cells, and it doesn't seem like it has been easy for the field to do so. There are primarily two ways for you to grow beta cells: (1) Isolate primary pancreatic beta cells from animal tissue, (2) Use immortalized insulin-secreting cell lines. The disadvantage of primary cells are that they usually don't proliferate very well in culture and you cannot maintain them for usually more than a week. Although immortalized insulin-secreting cell lines can be maintained for a much longer time in culture, there are disadvantages to them as well: Often, they are transformed to express oncogenes so that they can proliferate indefinitely and so these cell lines aren't "normal" in a sense. All the cell lines that are available also have their own individual problems: For example, some cell lines respond better to glucose with insulin secretion better than others. To this post, I've attached a review article I found on the different methods of growing beta cells, and you should read it over yourself to see which experimental systems suits the kind of questions you want to answer.

I personally have never worked with pancreatic beta cells before and am not extremely familiar with the diabetes field, so if any experts or moderators catch anything incorrect in my reply or have something to add, please do!

Best of luck,

Connie

Also, here is another attached article about the recent isolation of a human pancreatic beta cell line. Let me know if you have anymore questions!

Hi,

Everything Connie says is spot-on. I work in a lab that isolates primary Beta cells routinely, and it is a pretty tricky process that requires a fair amount of practice to do correctly. Also, you obviously need an animal source. Either with cell lines or primary cells you will need extensive access to some lab space and equipment. If this is possible I can help you out. Otherwise, Beta cell isolation and culture will not be feasible.

Cheers,
Colin

Thank you for your replies,

I actually do have all these essential things to culture cells (cell culture media, tissue culture dishes/flasks, a 37 degree incubator, biosafety hood)

I also have access to a Lab that contains these things.

I would like to know how i can isolate and culture primary beta cells.

Sincerely,
Marlon

Hi Marlon,

Do you have access to animal tissues? If so, which animal?

-Colin

Hello Colin,

I can actually order these cells online.
I just need to know what type of food they need and how to keep these beta cells alive.

Thank you

Marlon

Hi Marlon,

How long do you plan on culturing them? The culture medium required and supplements you need to add will depend on the exact cells you are using.
Example below of human islet cells:

http://www.lonza.com/products-services/ ... cells.aspx

Suppliers usually have recommendations for culture and so forth and of course, will sell you their proprietary media as well.

Example: http://bio.lonza.com/uploads/tx_mwaxmar ... Islets.pdf

Did you have a supplier in mind? Primary rat islets?

I also found some immortalized human islet cells: http://www.abmgood.com/Immortalized-Pan ... 0170A.html

Cheers,
Colin

Hi Collin,

Thank you for your help, I was looking at these catalogs and this helped me out a lot.


I have a quick question.


What are immortalized cells?


Thank you,
Marlon

Hello Collin,

I would also like to know if I could order rat beta cells and if I can where can I order them?


Thank you,
Marlon

Hi Mackin,

In response to your question about immortalized cells, normally cells don't proliferate indefinitely. However, if some sort of mutation is induced in cells (for example, in cancer), and those cells could proliferate indefinitely, then those are considered immortalized cells. The reason why immortalized cells are useful in the lab is because you can continuously passage them and they would keeping on dividing and growing, as opposed to primary cells, which would eventually stop growing and die.

Here's a wikipedia article on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortalised_cell_line

Connie

Hi Marlon,

Connie gave some good information on immortalized cells. Beta cells are particularly difficult to keep alive in culture, so immortalized lines could be helpful. However, these cells often have slightly different properties from the "parent" cells that have not been immortalized. This is a trade-off that often is made for ease of use.

Here is a mouse beta cell line: http://www.atcc.org/products/all/CRL-11506.aspx
ATCC is a good source for cell lines, here are other beta cell lines from ATCC: http://www.atcc.org/en/Search_Results.a ... ll&redir=1

Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Colin