Epithelial cells play an important role in the production of breast milk and transfer of different substances from mother to baby through milk. The ConcePTION project has developed a model to produce epithelial cell cultures from pigs that can help us study medicine safety in breastfeeding. This model is described in a recent paper in Animals, and part of an effort to develop knowledge for women who need to decide between medical treatments and breastfeeding.
New mothers sometimes need medical treatments, which often leads to difficult choices between her own health and breastfeeding her baby. To be able to offer information that women and their doctors can trust, we need to understand how chemical substances transfer from mother to newborn, or what we would call xenobiotic transfer.
The ConcePTION project is committed to using animals responsibly and in accordance with the 3R-principle, which means reducing the number of animals used for research, refining methods and replacing animals whenever it is possible. In vitro methods, including cell cultures, are now indispensable approaches to complement animal data. According to Chiara Bernardini, technical research at the Department of Veterinary Medical Sciences, University of Bologna, this new method allows us to produce primary cell cultures from the mammary glands of pigs used in food production, collecting tissue from slaughterhouses instead of using lab animals.
“The approach uses mammary epithelial cells from conventional pigs, or pMECs for short. These primary cell lines are part of a ConcePTION toolbox of non-clinical models that will help develop translational knowledge for women and health care professionals about medicine safety in breastfeeding”, says Dr Chiara Bernardini.
According to Chiara Bernardini, the novelty is in how these primary cell lines are produced. In technical terms, the team developed a new method to obtain primary pMECs through a technical innovation that combines enzymatic-mechanical tissue dissociation with multi step culture selection. The pMECs cellular lines show a specific epithelial phenotype, a clear attitude to create an epithelial barrier and express the main ABC and SLC drug transporters.
According to the authors, pMECs will serve as a valid tool to study the mammary epithelial barrier function in vitro. Using this approach will help reduce the number of animals needed to develop models for medicines safety in breastfeeding in the ConcePTION project.
The paper is published in a special issue of Animals on Current Contribution to the Research Based on Animal Tissue and Cellular Models: Bernardini C, La Mantia D, Salaroli R, Zannoni A, Nauwelaerts N, Deferm N, Ventrella D, Bacci ML, Sarli G, Bouisset-Leonard M, Annaert P, Forni M. Development of a Pig Mammary Epithelial Cell Culture Model as a Non-Clinical Tool for Studying Epithelial Barrier—A Contribution from the IMI-ConcePTION Project. Animals, volume 11 (no 7) (2021)
By Josepine Fernow
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