An explant based‐method for differentiating adipocytes from equine adipose tissue

Summary Culturing adipocytes enables fine control of experimental conditions and helps minimise animal use. This report describes an explant‐based method for isolating stromal‐vascular cells from equine adipose tissue that enables use of small amounts of tissue. Subcutaneous and mesenteric adipose tissues were harvested post mortem and stromal‐vascular cells grown from explants, prior to testing the capacity of several differentiation media to induce lipid droplet formation and increase transcript abundance of adipocyte markers. Inclusion of rosiglitazone at 1 and 5 µmol/l concentrations, along with other media components, induced differentiation of cultured equine stromal‐vascular cells derived from subcutaneous and mesenteric adipose tissues.