FIG. 1.

Viability of human colon tissues in organ culture. Human normal colon and colon carcinoma tissues were obtained from the surgery room in accordance with approval no. 20-01/08/03 of the institutional review board of Hadassah Hospital. Organ cultures were prepared as described in Materials and Methods and incubated for the indicated times. (A and B) Histological sections (5 μm) were prepared from organ cultures of human colon carcinoma tissues immediately after obtaining them from the surgery room and at 0 h and 30 h postculture. The slides were stained with hematoxylin and eosin. A mucin-producing human carcinoma is shown in panel B, displaying the mucin layer. Mucin is evident by typical bluish gray acellular material. Carcinoma cells are indicated by arrows, and mitotic cells are indicated by an arrowhead. (C) An MTT viability assay was carried out and corrected for the protein content of the human tissue as described in Materials and Methods. Pretreatment of the tissues with 70% ethanol resulted in a loss of viability and consequently eliminated MTT activity. Data are means ± SD (n = 6).