Two market leading companies in the field of cell based assays and predictive toxicology today announced a new product collaboration. Medicyte (inventors of the upcyte® technology) and Reinnervate (market leaders in the growing field of 3D cell culture) said they will work together to combine their upcyte® and Alvetex®Scaffold technologies to bring next generation cell bases assays to the biopharma and academic research markets.
Early data, already presented at academic meetings, indicates that Medicyte’s upcyte® hepatocytes combine the benefits of quantity (generation of up to 2000 vials per donor) with the quality of primary hepatocytes. Furthermore, upcyte® hepatocytes, grown with a more native 3D morphology in Reinnervate’s alvetex scaffold, seem to outperform their 2D counterparts.
‘We are delighted that Medicyte have chosen to put Alvetex®Scaffold at the heart of their new product development plans’ commented Prof Stefan Przyborski, CSO of Reinnervate Ltd. ‘The ability of 3D cells to better predict in vivo responses to therapeutic and environmental challenges makes alvetex scaffold technology an important new tool for scientists’ he added.
‘We are excited about working with Reinnervate to explore the growing area of 3D cell culture. The combination of both technologies will undoubtedly lead to a more predictive culture model without the limitation of cell supply’ commented Dr. Joris Braspenning, Managing Director of Medicyte GmbH.
The two companies did not disclose financial terms relating to the collaboration.
About Alvetex®Scaffold
Alvetex®Scaffold is a unique polystyrene material that provides a robust and inert scaffold for cells to grow and form complex 3D structures in the laboratory, mimicking the normal growth and formation of tissues in the body. Reinnervate has extensively tested and validated Alvetex®Scaffold with a large number of cell types, including liver, skin, cancer and stem cells, all of which have important applications in basic research into cell development, disease modelling and drug safety screening.
Alvetex®Scaffold has been launched globally in several formats: 12 and 24-well culture plate, 6-well and 12-well inserts and a deep petri dish. These formats provide researchers with an exceptional degree of versatility in how they choose to construct different 3D cell culture models. Through enabling alternative applications, such as long-term 3D cell culture over several weeks, 3D cell growth at air/liquid interface and 3D cell growth with different media constituents, to be performed simply and routinely, reinnervate continues to make genuine 3D cell culture a reality for researchers today.
Alvetex®Scaffold was voted as one of the top 100 innovative products of 2011 at the R&D 100 awards and was named among the winners of The Scientist magazine’s “Top 10 Life Science Innovations of 2010”.
See the company video - www.reinnervate.com/company-video
About Upcyte® Technology
Currently, the primary cell types commercially available are restricted, and their poor proliferative capacity limits their use in cell-based assays. The use of immortalized cell lines in cell-based models, on the other hand, is compromised by their transformed and not healthy phenotype.
Using Medicyte´s innovative upcyte® technology, primary cells are driven into proliferation, thus allowing controlled induction of cell proliferation inducing immortalization, uncontrolled cell growth or changing typical characteristics.
Therefore, upcyte® cells and corresponding cell-based assays can become available in sufficient quantities with a consistent quality that can be used for research, screening and drug development.
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