Tissue Organ Bath

Basic Tissue Properties

Vascular smooth muscle function
Vascular endothelium function
Length-tension relationships (also motorized)
Wall tension & morphometric measurements
Assessment of pharmacological reactivity

Pharmacology

Quantify the effect of treatment with contractile and relaxing agents
Receptor studies, localization and characterization of receptors
Affinity & efficacy studies of agonists & antagonists
Drug studies efficiency & efficacy, drug discovery & safety pharmacology

Physiology Changes & Pathology

Hypertension
Atherosclerosis
Diabetes
Ageing
Ischemic heart disease & heart failure
Tumors & angiogenesis
Gastrointestinal & urogenital disease pregnancy, preeclampsia
Exercise physiology, muscular degenerative diseases

Vasaoactive Mechanisms

Endothelium: role of endothelium-derived relaxing factor (NO), prostaglandins and endothelium-derived hyperpolarizing factor (EDHF)
Smooth muscle: role of calcium and potassium and other ion channels
Perivascular and intramural nerves: role of endogenously released transmitters

"The addictive workhorse for your routine high-throughput pharmacological studies on nearly all type of muscle."

An isolated organ bath assay is the classical pharmacological screening tool to assess concentration-response relationships in contractile tissue. Although a variety of molecular tools have become available in recent decades to assess cellular responses in high-throughput quantities, the organ bath assay is still considered a valuable tool for lead optimization and for the elucidation of the mechanism of action. In addition, organ bath assays are widely used in preclinical safety studies.

The most common application of the organ bath assay is in cardiovascular research, using isolated aortic rings, heart tissue (papillary muscle, left ventricles) or arteries. For studying gastro-intestinal effects, preparations of ileum and colon are often used, but also gastric antral muscle and sphincter may be studied.

Respiratory effects can be studied in isolated tracheal rings, phrenic diaphragm preparations, pulmonary arterial smooth muscle and even lung parenchyma. Other smooth muscle preparations that are used in organ bath research are urinary bladder, penile muscle strips and prostate.

Organ Bath Systems

Organ Bath System - 720MO

This Organ Bath System is ideal for work requiring a higher throughput, such as drug screening, running concentration response curves or in experiments where separation of vessels in separate baths is necessary.

Muscle Strip System - 820MS

Ideal system for measuring mechanical properties of isolated muscle strips such as TA, Soleus, EDL and/or vascular reactivity of larger ring-mounted segments of vascular smooth muscle, trachea, bronchial, lung, gut, uterine, colon, veins etc.