Ultrastructural immunoperoxidase investigations of human glomerular cells in tissue culture.

In order to elucidate the cells produced from human glomerular cultures, a pre-embedding ultrastructural immunoperoxidase technique was developed to investigate the precise localisation of a panel of monoclonal antibodies specific to human glomerular antigens in situ and used to identify the same antigens in vitro. The results obtained were correlated with the morphological features of the cells demonstrated by scanning electron microscopy. The study was able to show the presence of epithelial and mesangial cells in tissue culture, to confirm previous results indicating that glomerular endothelial cells are not present and to give some insight into the production of different basement membrane components by different cell types.