3D Biomatrix

Perfecta3D Hanging Drop Plates

admin — Thu, 17 May 2012 14:42:41 +0000

Perfecta3D™ Hanging Drop Plates from 3D Biomatrix facilitate easy, controllable, and consistent 3D spheroid cultures in a well plate format. Simply pipet your cell suspension into a well, and it will hang below the well. As the cells aren’t in contact with any surfaces, they aggregate into a spheroid. What results is one spheroid per well, so you can control the size of the spheroid based on the number of cells seeded.

Whether you are interested in drug screening, cancer research, or tissue engineering, spheroids cultured in 3D Biomatrix’s Perfecta3D™ Hanging Drop Plates will help you obtain more realistic data.

Chemosensitivity testing

Mixed and patterned co-cultures

Robust data in fluorescence- and colorimetric-based assays

Growing list of cells tested

Click your flag to visit your distributor:

Perfecta3D Hanging Drop Plates

admin — Mon, 14 May 2012 16:12:16 +0000

Chemosensitivity testing

Mixed and patterned co-cultures

Robust data in fluorescence- and colorimetric-based assays

Growing list of cells tested

Perfecta3D Hanging Drop Plates

admin — Mon, 14 May 2012 15:11:55 +0000

Chemosensitivity testing

Mixed and patterned co-cultures

Robust data in fluorescence- and colorimetric-based assays

Growing list of cells tested

Perfecta3D Hanging Drop Plates

admin — Mon, 14 May 2012 14:52:01 +0000

Chemosensitivity testing

Mixed and patterned co-cultures

Robust data in fluorescence- and colorimetric-based assays

Growing list of cells tested

Perfecta3D Hanging Drop Plates

Meghan Cuddihy — Thu, 10 May 2012 16:37:41 +0000

Chemosensitivity testing

Mixed and patterned co-cultures

Robust data in fluorescence- and colorimetric-based assays

Growing list of cells tested

3D Biomatrix moving 3D ahead

admin — Thu, 10 May 2012 13:36:07 +0000

Perfecta3D® Hanging Drop Plates gain awareness according to HTStec’s 2011 3D Cell Culture Report

HTStec conducted its second industry-wide global web-based benchmarking survey on three-dimensional (3D) cell culture (http://www.htstec.com/consultancyitem.aspx?Item=332). The study aimed to document current interest and progress made in applying 3D cell culture techniques in academic research, drug discovery and tissue engineering/regenerative medicine settings, and to understand their future requirements.

According to the survey, more realistic cell biology and function are the most important advantage of 3D cell culture. The study cites model development and tissue modeling to be the application area where 3D cell culture is expected to make the biggest impact. These findings explain the growing interest in 3D Biomatrix’s Perfecta3D™ Hanging Drop Plates, as these plates provide a simple-to-use and elegant tool for researchers to create tumor models and obtain physiologically-relevant results.

HTStec’s study acknowledges that automation plays a critical part in adoption of 3D cell culture technologies, especially in drug testing and discovery. 3D Biomatrix is excited and happy to find that HTCtec’s survey respondents cited our Perfecta3D™ Hanging Drop Plates as an approach for automating 3D cell culture that they were most aware of. Indeed, the Perfecta3D™ Hanging Drop Plates are designed to work with automation instruments to enable high-throughput screening. We continue to innovate our products and work with instrument suppliers to help our users achieve their 3D cell culture objectives.

The Mistaken Identity of Cell Lines

Meghan Cuddihy — Thu, 10 May 2012 09:35:24 +0000

The recent article on contaminated and misidentified cell lines in the Wall Street Journal gave a sobering mainstream look at a problem that has been discussed (and maybe ignored) in the cell culture research community for years.

This is obviously a serious problem that needs to be overcome with better procedures, record keeping, and housekeeping. How many of us have received a cell line from someone else and trusted what the giver said it was? In my own graduate school experience, I was handed a cell line when I first started and it took me almost a year to start questioning the protocols (e.g., why this concentration of serum?) that came with it, let alone whether the cell line was what I thought it was. Nobody wants to face the facts that years or decades of their research could be based on a gross mistake.

This article has brought up something that our team has talked about, having to do with misidentification of the microenvironment of a cell line. When cell lines are established, they are plopped down in a 2D flask or well plate, proliferated and characterized. We know that the gene expression profiles change depending on whether cells are grown in 2D or 3D. How much information are we gathering on cell lines (both to identify them and in research) that doesn’t apply in the body? Are gene expression profiles reversible? Meaning, if you take a cell from the body, expand it in 2D, and then do 3D research, are you getting as accurate result as you would if the cells had been expanded in 3D to begin with?

Pharma to Open Freezers

Meghan Cuddihy — Tue, 08 May 2012 09:22:58 +0000

AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly & Co, and Pfizer announced recently that they were going to open up their freezers and allow for some of their shelved drugs to be tested through an NIH program. These are drugs that were proven to be safe in human trials, but failed to treat the disease that the drugmaker had targeted. The NIH wants researchers to take a look at the data behind the drugs and propose alternative targets that the drugs may prove efficacious against.

This is great news, and may result in some relatively quick treatments. Sometimes we at 3D Biomatrix wonder, if you were to look at the compounds that failed early on in 2D in vitro testing, would any of them appear more promising in 3D cell cultures? Take a look at our preliminary drug-testing data. Imagine if the mechanism of tirapazamine wasn’t known, and it was only tested in 2D. Would it have made it?

Can Better Tools Save Pharma Time and Money?

Meghan Cuddihy — Fri, 04 May 2012 11:31:21 +0000

Recently we noticed an interesting post on “In the Pipeline,” an informative drug discovery blog by Derek Lowe. In his post, he summarizes a response from John LaMattina at Forbes to a speech by Dr. Janet Woodcock, Director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research at the FDA about drug failures.

Lowe mentions, “Of course, those tools [that can better predict the performance of a compound in late stage studies] are a good idea, and would be worth a lot…But the FDA will not approve drugs based on them.”

This sparked a lot of conversation at 3D Biomatrix, where we are developing tools to better predict the performance of compounds in late stage studies. With better data earlier on, researchers and companies can make better decisions about which compounds are pushed along in the process, and which compounds are stopped early. This would save companies time and money because they won’t go forward with drugs that would eventually fail.

The statement about the FDA not approving drugs based on these tools made us think about the right place for 3D cell cultures. Given that the FDA will never reduce the amount of clinical trial data required to approve a drug, will they ever reduce the amount of animal data if it is replaced by a better in vitro tool? What would kind of proof will be necessary, and who is responsible for providing the proof to the FDA?

What do you think? Will better in vitro tools ease the path to approval? Will they ever replace any data that is currently required for approval? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Easy Spheroid Formation

Meghan Cuddihy — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 19:39:02 +0000

Traditionally, cell spheroids are formed utilizing the lid of a well plate, gels, or low-attachment plates. While these technologies certainly facilitate spheroid formation, they lack the ease, neatness, and controllability of spheroid formation and culture in Perfecta3D Hanging Dop Plates.

3D spheroid formation is easy with Perfecta3D Hanging Drop Plates.

Spheroid formation is easy within Perfecta3D Hanging Drop Plates. Simply pipet 25-30 microliters of your cell suspension into each well. Each well contains a specially designed channel that allows the cell suspension droplet to hang from the bottom of the well. As the cells don’t have anything to attach to, they aggregate over one or several days to form a spheroid, as shown below, depending on the cell type.

Spheroids form over one or several days.

In Perfecta3D Hanging Drop Plates, only one spheroid results in each well, providing greater well-to-well consistency. The diameter of each spheroid is controlled by the number of cells initially added to each well, as seen in the graph below.

Spheroid size is controlled by the number of cells initially seeded into the well.

Read more about how you can use the Perfecta3D Hanging Drop Plates in your lab in drug testing and co-cultures.

Order today!