Reinnervate’s Alvetex scaffold will be combined with Kirkstall’s Quasi-Viso cell culture technology.
Reinnervate and Kirkstall will collaborate to bring next-generation 3-D cell culture products to market. Under the terms of the agreement Reinnervate’s Alvetex technology will be coupled with Kirkstall’s Quasi-Viso platform. The two companies aim to launch the new joint product at the Kirkstall-sponsored “Advances in In-Vitro Cell Culture” meeting in Utrecht during May.
“Alvetex scaffold is becoming the industry standard for scientists who need to retain the native structure and functionality of cells to better mimic in vivo biological models,” according to Richard Rowling, commercial director at Reinnervate. “We are delighted that Kirkstall has decided to offer the Alvetex scaffold at the heart of their 3-D Quasi-Vivo platform.”
Malcolm Wilkinson, CEO of Kirkstall, adds, “Life scientists are beginning to realize that perfusion-based cell culture systems can significantly improve the biological relevance of in vitro cell-based assays. The Quasi-Vivo system already helps many leading laboratories improve the predictive accuracy of their ADMET studies. The early data we have that combines perfusion-based cell culture with 3-D cell growth shows stunning differences when compared to traditional 2-D approaches.”
Alvetex scaffold is a polystyrene material that provides a robust and inert scaffold for cells to grow and form complex 3-D structures in the laboratory, mimicking the normal growth and formation of tissues in the body. Reinnervate says that it has extensively tested and validated Alvetex scaffold with a large number of cell types including liver, skin, cancer, and stem cells.
Alvetex scaffold has been launched globally in several formats: a 12-well culture plate, 6-well and 12-well inserts, and a deep petri dish. It enables applications such as long-term 3-D cell culture, 3-D cell growth at air/liquid interface, and 3-D cell growth with different media constituents.
Quasi-Vivo is a system comprising cell culture chambers designed to introduce flow of media and provide an easy-to-use way of creating interconnected systems to model cell to cell signaling. Chambers can be supplied with dedicated ancillary components and other consumables such as tubing, peristaltic pumps, culture medium reservoirs, etc. By closely mimicking human metabolism, the Quasi-Vivo system provides a more physiologically accurate representation than culture grown in static well plates. The product range is steadily being expanded to include a number of proprietary reagents, media, and cells, some of which will be obtained under OEM agreements from established providers such as Reinnervate.