PancreaCult OIM (Human)

A culture medium kit from STEMCELL Technologies designed to support the establishment of human pancreatic duct organoids from fresh or cryopreserved islet-depleted exocrine fractions, as well as from dissociated tumor tissue. The kit provides the Organoid Initiation Medium (OIM), which is optimized to deliver higher rates of organoid formation from primary tissue during the initial stage of culture. Once established, organoids can be transferred to the companion Organoid Growth Medium (OGM) for long-term maintenance, expansion, and cryopreservation, or adapted to culture formats including two-dimensional Transwell monolayer cultures, dilute Corning Matrigel suspension cultures, and high-throughput assay-compatible culture formats.

Organoids established with this medium system display cystic morphology with a hollow lumen and apical-basolateral orientation, and maintain expression of pancreatic duct cell markers including CK19, SOX9, EPCAM, MUC1, and CA2, as well as the proliferation marker KI67. The system enables a completely serum-free workflow when used with OGM, although proliferative pancreatic ductal cells are reported to be better supported by OIM during the first 3 days of culture. Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) cells with KRAS-activating mutations can maintain EGF-independent growth, and selective removal of EGF from OGM can be used to eliminate contaminating normal cells from such tumor cultures.

Applications include studying the development and function of duct epithelium, modeling pancreatic diseases such as cancer or cystic fibrosis, and performing targeted drug screens. The product is sold for research use only and is developed under a license to intellectual property owned by Hubrecht Organoid Technology (HUB); purchasers wishing to use it for commercial purposes such as drug screening for commercial gain, equipment validation, or biobanking should contact HUB to obtain a further license.