Primary Acinar Cell Isolation: A Method to Isolate Acinar Cells from Mouse Pancreas

- A pancreatic acinar cell is an exocrine cell that contains a variety of digestive enzymes. Sometimes, in response to oncogenic signaling, the acinar cell converts to a ductal cell. This ductal cell can later become cancerous. Therefore, it's vital to isolate the acinar cells to study their role in pancreatic cancer progression.

Begin by isolating the pancreas from a euthanized mouse. Add the pancreas to a weigh boat containing a balanced salt solution supplemented with an antibiotic. Mince the pancreas into small pieces using scissors and add the pancreatic tissue to a tube. Next, add collagenase solution to the pancreas pieces in the tube.

Collagenase digests the collagen that holds the tissue together so that the tissue breaks into fine pieces. Now, add serum-containing media to the tube and place the tissue on ice. This helps to stop the action of collagenase.

Filter the tissue and media twice, progressively decreasing the mesh size of the filter each time to obtain fine tissue suspension. Finally, centrifuge the resulting suspension to collect the acinar cells in the pellet. Remove the supernatant and store the acinar cells for further analysis. In the following protocol, we