Primary culture and identification of neonatal rat osteoblasts

Cheng Hao; Zhang Yan-fang; Xu Wei

doi:10.3969/j.issn.2095-4344.2013.41.003

Abstract：BACKGROUND:Tissue engineering requires a lot of seed cells. Osteoblasts have become important seed cells in bone tissue engineering. However, it is difficult to culture the osteoblasts, and cellnumber, purity, proliferation and differentiation activity are different obtained by different culture methods. OBJECTIVE:To identify and compare three common primary osteoblat culture methods, and to explore a method for the primary culture of osteoblasts which is easy to operate, economical and effective, in order to provide basis for the further experimental research. METHODS:Calvarias were dissected from newborn Sprague Dawley rats in 72 hours, and osteoblasts were isolated with col agenase digestion method, sequential digestion method and bone tissue method respectively. The morphological observation and cytochemical staining were performed, the growth curve of the cells was drawn with cellCounting Kit-8 method, and the rate of living osteobalsts was counted with trypan blue staining. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION:The proliferation of the insolated and cultured osteoblasts was wel with typical characteristics of osteoblasts, cytochemical staining results were positive. Compared with the sequential col agenase digestion method, the col agenase digestion method presented higher production of osteoblasts and higher cellsurvival rate (P<0.05), and the col agenase digestion method was easier than the sequential col agenase digestion method and cost less than sequential col agenase digestion method. Bone tissue method was the easiest method with less damage to cells, but bone tissue method presented lower production of osteoblasts and cost much more time, which cannot be used in large-scale osteoblast culture. The col agenase digestion method is a simple, efficient and ideal method for isolation and culture of primary osteoblasts.