ISOLATION AND CULTURE OF HUMAN TRABECULAR MESHWORK CELLS BY EXTRACELLULAR-MATRIX DIGESTION

Like corneal endothelial cells, human trabecular meshwork cells are be lieved to be of neural crest origin, but demonstrate physiological pro perties and an antithrombogenic surface similar to vascular endothelia l cells. One current method for isolating trabecular meshwork cells ut ilizes the motile nature of these cells to migrate away from a trabecu lar meshwork explant in culture to more distal regions of the culture dish. This 'outgrowth' technique is limited in practice by the relativ ely small number of cells that migrate per explant per unit time, thus hindering the ability to gather sufficient numbers of cells for compr ehensive experimentation. For this reason, we have modified an extrace llular matrix digestion technique in current use for the isolation of microvascular endothelial cells to isolate human trabecular meshwork c ells. This procedure is both efficient and rapid for isolating large n umbers of trabecular meshwork cells and results in the availability of trabecular meshwork cells in sufficient quantities for subsequent exp erimentation.