“…Pri mary monolayer cultures now have been described for normal rat and human intrahepatic biliary epithelial cells [28,32,33], for hyperplastic bile ductular epithelial cells isolated from mouse and rat livers after bile duct ligation [26,34,35], and for oval cells from the liver of rats fed hepatocarcinogenic diets [30,97,98], Short-term primary explant cultures were also developed with a hyperplastic bile ductular tissue preparation obtained from the liver of bile duct-ligated rats [26] and with intact intrahepatic bile ducts from normal rats [99], In addition, primary cultures have been established with extrahepatic biliary epithelial cells, including those iso lated from human cystic ducts [100,101] and bovine extrahepatic ducts [102], as well as cells from explants of guinea pig gallbladder mucosa [103].…”