Cultivation at low temperature as a measure to prevent contamination with fibroblasts in epithelial cultures from human skin.

A major problem in cultivating normal human skin epithelium is overgrowth of the epidermal cells by fibroblasts. In this report we show that it is possible to obtain pure epithelial cell cultures by lowering the incubation temperature to 32-33 degrees C. Whereas the epithelial growth proceeds unchanged at this temperature, the growth of fibroblasts is strongly inhibited.