Mass-producing stem cells to satisfy the demands of regenerative medicine
Reported by: Irina Robu, PhD
Instead of culturing cell on round, flat Petri dishes, Steve Oh from A*STAR Bioprocessing Technology Institute he grew them in a tiny polystyrene beads known as microcarriers floating in a nutritional brew. The standard Petri dish fits fewer than 100,000 cells, a minuscule amount when stacked against the 2 billion muscle cells that make up the heart or 100 billion red blood cells needed to fill a bag of blood.
However after six years of refining the processes, they were able to achieve three times higher cell densities than petri dishes approach by modifying the feeding strategy. Their success started with cardiomyocytes wich are known as the fastest cell type to differentiate. The researchers developed a strategy to grow pure batches of cariomyocytes without adding growth factors but instead use small molecules to first inhibit and then activate a key cell differentiation pathway known as Wnt signaling. Then they apply the small molecule approach to grow and differentiate cardiomyocytes from embryonic stem cells directly on microcarriers. And according to Dr. Oh their method had beat the Petri dish methods on purity, yield, cost of cells and simplicity of process.
The main goal of the research is to grow enough cells inexpensively in order to patch up one square-centimeter of damaged heart muscle following a heart attack.
Source
http://phys.org/news/2015-06-mass-producing-stem-cells-demands-regenerative.html
Leave a Reply