[Secretory activity of the islands of Langerhans of newborn rats cultured in vitro on bovine corneal endothelial matrix].

Corneal endothelial cells have been shown to synthesize in vitro components of extra-cellular matrix. When the medium contains growth factors, those components reconstitute a nearly physiologic basement membrane which has been successfully used to improve several culture systems. In this work we investigated the influence of the matrix synthesized by bovine corneal endothelial cells, without growth factors, on rat neonatal pancreatic islets. After one week, islets cultivated on plastic showed a slight decrease in their insulin-releasing ability, whereas the secretory capability of islets cultivated on a matrix remained nearly constant. The difference in daily insulin release between those two culture systems reached the significance on the 20th day (p less than 0.02). Thus, such matrices could exert a favourable effect on cultured neonatal rat islets. The importance and the duration of this effect remain to be precisely determined by further investigations.