3D Magnetized Cell Culture Substrate
Opportunity
Cell culturing-based companies are rapidly developing and the inputs and consumables alone already account for approximately $35 billion annually, amongst which include cultured meat companies which are presently under fast industrialization.
However, many of the technologies pertaining to spatiotemporal manipulation of cells involve magnetically labelling the cell which is undesirable. Further, the primary upstream bottlenecks faced by the industry include the high cost from use of expensive growth factors and serum in media and significant cell mortality during cell growth in bioreactors.
This technology presents a solution for cell culture and seed germination platforms based on the positive response of cell growth towards mechanical stimulus applied on a hydrogel substrate.
Technology
The technology comprises a patented method to prepare a functionalized hydrogel which serves as the platform for cell culture and seed germination. The functionalized hydrogel composition also capitalizes on its additional crosslinking feature which differs from prior art to confer the desired combinatorial properties of the hydrogel substrate.
In the functionalized hydrogel, the physical property of the hydrogel can be modulated to not only be manipulable by magnetism, but can also better transmit mechanical forces through the hydrogel to induce mechano-transduction in the various systems such as cell, tissue or seed systems.
The hydrogel substrate has paramagnetic property for mechanical stretching to sustain the survival of cells. In addition, the hydrogel composition allows the modification of Young’s modulus for material stiffness to achieve the optimal parameters for cell growth.
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