Porous-bottom dishes for culture of polarized cells.

Porous-bottom dishes offer several advantages for growing and studying epithelia in culture. Many epithelia differentiate more on porous surfaces than on plastic tissue culture dishes. In addition, separate solutions can be maintained on each side of the epithelium and can be sampled easily for studies of transport and other polarized functions. We describe the fabrication of dishes with a cellulose ester filter, a collagen-coated polycarbonate filter, or a collagen membrane forming the surface for cell attachment at the bottom of the dish.