Cryopreservation in situ of cell monolayers on collagen vitrigel membrane culture substrata: ready-to-use preparation of primary hepatocytes and ES cells.

Cryopreservation is generally performed on cells in suspension. In the case of adherent cells such as hepatocytes, a loss of their ability to attach is a more serious problem than a decreased viability after cryopreservation. We herein report a novel technology of direct in situ cryopreservation of cells cultured on collagen vitrigel membranes, which have excellent mechanical strength and can be easily handled by tweezers even when coated with cultured cells. Rat primary hepatocytes, mitomycin C-treated mouse fibroblasts (feeder cells for ES cells), and mouse ES cells on the feeder cells were cultured on collagen vitrigel membranes for 1 day. The membranes with cells attached were then plucked up from the dish, soaked in cryopreservation medium containing 10% dimethyl sulfoxide, frozen using a controlled-rate freezer, and transferred to liquid nitrogen. The cells cultured on plastic cell culture dishes were also frozen as controls. After storage in liquid nitrogen for periods from 1 week to 3 months, the cryopreserved membranes with the cells still attached were thawed by adding warmed culture medium. Cell viability estimated by morphology and functional staining with calcein showed significant improvement in comparison to cells cryopreserved without the collagen vitrigel membrane. The recoveries of living cells after cryopreservation were 26.7%, 76.2%, and 58.6% for rat hepatocytes, mitomycin C-treated mouse fibroblasts, and mouse ES cells on collagen vitrigel membranes, respectively. In contrast, essentially no cells at all remained on the plastic cell culture dishes after thawing. Because adherent cell storage under these conditions is very convenient, the use of this technique employing collagen vitrigel membranes should be generally applicable to the cryopreservation of adherent cells that are otherwise problematic to store as frozen stocks.