Mouse Corneal Epithelial and Stromal Cell Isolation and Culture

Corneal epithelium and stroma are the major cellular structures for ocular protection and vision accuracy; they play important roles in corneal wound healing and inflammation under pathological conditions. Unlike human, murine corneal and stromal fibroblast cells are difficult to isolate for cell culture. In our laboratory, we successfully used an ex vivo culture procedure and an enzymatic procedure to isolate, purify, and culture mouse corneal epithelial and stromal fibroblast cells. Key features Primary cell culture models of a disease are critical for cellular and molecular mechanism studies. Corneal tissues with the limbus contain stem cells to generate both epithelial and stromal cells. An ex vivo corneal culture provides a constant generation of primary corneal cells for multiple passages. The isolated cells are validated by the corneal epithelial cell markers Krt12 and Cdh1 and the stromal fibroblast marker Vim.