Placental slice techniques in physiology, pathophysiology, and toxicology: A systematic review with a focus on precision-cut slices.
Placental precision-cut tissue slices offer an advanced in vitro model that preserves tissue architecture and microenvironment, improving physiological relevance over traditional methods such as animal models and cell lines. This systematic review summarizes the methods and applications of placental slices in research. A PRISMA-guided systematic review was conducted in PubMed and Embase to identify studies involving slicing techniques in placenta-related research published up to June 6, 2025. Primary articles using human or animal placental slices for culture were included. Key study variables, including study aims, placenta characteristics, slice techniques, culture conditions, viability assessments, and main findings were extracted and analyzed. A total of 52 studies were included. Of these studies, 30 used human placenta (90.0% from term pregnancies) and 24 used animal placentas (87.6% late-term). Slicing methods were described in 33 studies, with 14 of those were manually prepared. The most commonly used culture condition was Krebs-Ringer bicarbonate buffer (36.5%), combined with 95% O2 and 5% CO2 (79.5%). Only eight studies conducted viability assessments, with histological morphology being the most frequently used approach. Based on research focus, the studies were categorized into physiological (69.2%), pathophysiological (17.3%), and toxicological (13.4%) studies. In conclusion, this review summarizes current applications of placental slicing techniques and highlights the methodological diversity across studies. The variability in approaches underscore the need for standardized protocols, while the collective evidence supports the use of placental slices as a promising model for investigating placental physiology, pathophysiology, and toxicology.
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