A protocol for the culture and isolation of murine synovial fibroblasts

The culture of synovial fibroblasts (SFs) is one of the most effective tools for investigating the pathology and physiology of synovial tissues and should prove useful for identifying the importance of SFs in disease as well as for the development of novel therapeutic approaches for several chronic joint diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis. However, thus far, a detailed protocol for the primary culture and isolation of murine SFs has not been established. Therefore, the present study describes an easy and convenient method for isolating and culturing SFs from C57BL/6 mice. This protocol can be divided into 4 stages: Isolation of synovial tissues, isolation of SFs, seeding of SFs for growth in culture and purity analysis of SFs using the four cell markers, vimentin, cluster of differentiation 90.2 (CD90.2; Thy-1.2), intracellular adhesion molecule 1 (CD54) and vascular cell adhesion molecule 1 (CD106). This method is efficient and a purified population of SFs can be obtained 10 days after the initiation of culture.