Simultaneous Isolation of High Quality Cardiomyocytes, Endothelial Cells, and Fibroblasts from an Adult Rat Heart.

The rat is an important animal model used in cardiovascular research, and rat cardiac cells are used routinely for in vitro analysis of the molecular mechanisms of cardiovascular disease progression such as cardiac hypertrophy, fibrosis, and atherosclerosis. Although several attempts with variable success have been made to develop immortalized cell lines from the cardiovascular system to understand these cellular mechanisms, primary cells offer a more natural and close to in vivo environment for such studies. Therefore, different laboratories working on a particular cell type have developed protocols to isolate individual types of rat cardiac cells of interest. A protocol that allows the isolation of more than one cell type, however, is missing. Here an optimized protocol is described that allows the isolation of high-quality major cardiac cell types (cardiomyocytes, endothelial cells, and fibroblasts) from a single preparation and enables their use for cellular analyses. This permits the most efficient use of available resources, which may save time and reduce research costs.