Merck KGaA’s life science division EMD Millipore negotiated a license to distribute Plasticell’s fully-defined serum- and xeno-free osteogenic medium for research applications. Plasticell retains rights to market the medium for commercial applications.
The culture medium for mesenchymal stem cell differentiation has been developed using Plasticell’s flagship bead-based Combinatorial Cell Culture (CombiCult™) platform, which tests millions of random combinations of cell culture variables in parallel to discover optimal laboratory protocols for the differentiation of adult or pluripotent stem cells.
To develop the optimized osteogenic medium CombiCult was used to screen over 3,375 combinations of fully defined cell culture media, which the firm says was equivalent to hundreds of thousands of combinations of media components. “The formulation of this medium in under three months from start to finish is a clear demonstration of the capability of the CombiCult technology,” comments Jey Jeyakumar, Ph.D., Plasticell’s principal scientist.