Isolation of periportal, midlobular, and centrilobular rat liver sinusoidal endothelial cells enables study of zonated drug toxicity.

Many liver sinusoidal endothelial cell (LSEC)-dependent processes, including drug-induced liver injury, ischemia-reperfusion injury, acute and chronic rejection, fibrosis, and the HELLP (hemolytic anemia, elevated liver enzymes, low platelet count) syndrome, may have a lobular distribution. Studies of the mechanism of this distribution would benefit from a reliable method to isolate LSEC populations from different regions. We established and verified a simple method to isolate periportal, midlobular, and centrilobular LSEC.