Optimizing Methods In Microtissue Cultivation

By Bastien Machi, Biotechnology Engineer, InSphero AG and Michael Beier, Product Manager for Liquid Handling, INTEGRA Biosciences

Cells grown in standard suspension or monolayer culture lose many features that are characteristic of cells in tissues and limit their use to study certain aspects of cell biology. Major differences to in vivo growth conditions of cells are:

• Mostly cell-substrate interactions, absence or limited cell to cell and cell to matrix interaction
• Flat cell shape rather than a three-dimensional architecture
• Altered hormonal, nutritional and physical environment
• Altered gene expression profile

InSphero has developed a hanging drop culture system to overcome these drawbacks of conventional cell culture technologies. As a result, the cells preserve their differentiated function and tissue like behavior. The microtissue system is based on the novel GravityPlus culture platform (patent pending) which is designed for the use of multichannel pipettes for efficient processing of the hanging drops such as cell loading, media exchange or compound supplementation.