- Alternative, cheap and effective way of carrying out aquatic toxicology, physiology and endocrinology
- Fulfils obligations of the NC3r’s – replace, reduce, refine the use of animals for scientific purposes
- Eliminates need to keep large stocks of live fish for testing
- Gill Cell Cultures from the gills of 2 fish effectively replaces 40-72 live fish using traditional testing methods
- Humane method – Using fish gill cell tissue means that no live fish are actually tested upon – lesser administrative burden on testing labs
This Fish Gill Cell Culture System cultures the primary gill cells of the freshwater rainbow trout on a flat permeable membrane. This procedure, known as the double seeded insert (DSI) technique, produces a heterogeneous gill epithelium that is the most realistic in vitro alternative to the gill organ.
The key features of FiGCS is that it is an electrically tight gill epithelium, which contains different cell types, including pavement cells and mitochondria rich cells, present in the intact gill, that as well as physiologically resembling the gill tissue, can tolerate freshwater akin to the normal fish gill. These characteristics are fundamental in recreating an in vitro freshwater gill epithelium that can be used to understand the biochemical and physiological processes that occur across and within this tissue.
The freshwater fish gill is a multifunctional organ and is the site of gas exchange, osmoregulation, trace metal transport, nitrogenous waste excretion and xenobiotic uptake. Fish are commonly used as indicator species to identify environmental hazards and, as their gills are constantly in contact with water, the gill epithelium is a focal point for studies that seek to understand deleterious effects of environmental toxicants. Whole animal studies can use millions of fish worldwide each year, and efforts are focusing on refining, reducing and replacing (3Rs) these numbers. FiGCS offers an alternative method to study fish toxicology in line with the 3Rs to reduce the numbers of animals in scientific research.
