3D Patient Derived Explant Culture with Tumour-Immune Cells in Animal-Free Hydrogel

Jonathan Sheard¹, Steven Worrall¹, Essi M. Niemi¹ & Piia Mikkonen^1
1UPM Biomedicals, Helsinki, Finland

 

GrowDex®, GrowDex®-T and GrowDex®-A are birch-based nanofibrillar cellulose (NFC) hydrogels for 3D cell culture. Besides NFC they contain only purified water. GrowDex hydrogels do not contain any animal or human-derived material.

GrowDex hydrogels support cell growth in 3D by physically resembling extracellular matrix (ECM) biocompatible with human cells and tissues. The structure and mechanical properties can be tuned to fulfill the requirements of different cell types (Fig.1) and the hydrogels allow free diffusion of nutrients and oxygen. GrowDex can be degraded to soluble glucose by cellulase enzyme while retaining the 3D structure of cells.

GrowDex hydrogels have excellent shear thinning properties and temperature stability, with a possibility to tune the stiffness to use them in many applications, including automated 3D cell-based high-throughput (HTS) and high content screening (HCS) assays such as drug discovery and development.

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