The Use of Cell and Organ Culture for the Study of Secreted Mucins

Mucins are major differentiated products of mucosal cells throughout the body and are thus important markers of normal and disease development. The use of human colonic cell lines as a model of the adenoma-carcinoma sequence is of particular interest because it allows the changes in expression of mucins to be studied during the development and progression of disease (1 ,2 ). Recently, the importance of proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis has attracted attention to the use of culture systems for the study of cell behavior in normal and disease processes (3 ,4 ). In the same way, tissue obtained from patients at surgery or as biopsies can be placed in short-term primary or organ culture to study similar changes in disease (5 ,6 ).