In vitro culture of Echinococcus multilocularis producing protoscoleces and mouse infection with the cultured vesicles

Table 1 A comparison of different conditions used for culturing E. multilocularis in vitro

	Hemphill et al. [14]	Jura et al. [15]	Spiliotis et al. [16]	This study
Initial parasite material	Small tissue blocks/ vesicles	Homogenized parasite tissue	Small vesicles	protoscoleces
Adding feeder cells	Yes^a	Yes^b	Yes^c	No
PSC formation	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Culture time	Stopped at day 100	At least 2 months	Stopped at day 56	More than 100 days

^aCulture medium: Initiated by first growing human cancer colon (CACO2) cells to confluency. Then RPMI 1640 containing 12 mM HEPES, 10 % FCS, 2 mM glutamine, penicillin (200 U/ml), streptomycin (200 μg/ml), fungizone (0.50 μg/ml) and 50 μM β-mercaptoethanol was added
^bCulture medium: 10 % FBS, 9.6 mg prednisolone/ml, 0.014 mg glucagon/ml, 0.16 U insulin/ml, penicillin (200 U/ml) and streptomycin (200 μg/ml). Primary hepatocytes and parasitic tissues were both embedded in a collagen bilayer
^cCulture medium: DMEM containing 100 U/ml penicillin G and 100 μg/ml streptomycin, 10 % FBS, different feeder cell lines, 0.01 % 2-mercaptoethanol, 100 μM L-cysteine and 10 μM bathocuproine disulfonic acid

ISSN: 1756-3305