Culture of Fetal Mouse Gastric Epithelial Progenitors.

Isolation and tridimensional culture of murine fetal progenitors from the digestive tract represents a new approach to study the nature and the biological characteristics of these epithelial cells that are present before the onset of the cytodifferentiation process during development. In 2013, Mustata described the isolation of intestinal fetal progenitors growing as spheroids in the culture system initially implemented by Sato (2009) to grow adult intestinal stem cells. Noteworthy, fetal-derived spheroids have high self-renewal capacity making easy their indefinite maintenance in culture. Here, we report an adapted protocol for isolation and culture and maintenance of fetal epithelial progenitors from distal pre-glandular stomach growing as gastric spheroids (Fernandez Vallone , 2016 ).