Isolation and Primary Cell Culture of Canine Trophoblasts

Introduction

Preeclampsia is a life-threatening condition that affects 5-7% of human pregnancies. Decades of in vitro research in this area have been unsuccessful in learning how to prevent it. In preeclampsia, trophoblasts shallowly invade the endometrial endothelium. This defective trophoblast invasion is detrimental to human pregnancy but represents normal endotheliochorial placentation in dogs. The objective of this research was to establish canine trophoblast cell lines to study in vitro trophoblast invasion and migration as a model for preeclampsia in humans. Cytokeratin-7 is a type II cytokeratin that positively labels human trophoblasts. For this experiment, we hypothesized that cultured canine trophoblasts would also be positive for cytokeratin-7. [...]