A Study of Fibrinogen Production by Human Liver Slices in Vitro by an Immunoprecipitin Method

There have been numerous experiments based on hepatectomy or acute liver intoxication indi- cating that the liver is the organ responsible for the manufacture of blood fibrinogen in dogs (1, 2) and rabbits (3).Perfusion experiments on rats (4) confirmed the role of the liver in the production of fibrinogen as well as of other plasma proteins except gamma globulins.Up to now, however, no demonstration was given that liver tissue could manufacture fibrino- gen in vitro, despite the fact that in vitro tech- niques with liver tissue were used to demonstrate the production of serum proteins in the chicken and in the rat (5-7).These studies were based on immunological methods for the detection and measurement of serum proteins.The demonstration by Gitlin and Borges (8) that immunoprecipitin methods are able to de- tect minute amounts of fibrinogen, as are found in patients with so-called afibrinogenemia, sug-'f li p A. I 4.