Applications

Soft substrate dishes for your standard culture

Today, conventional cell culture is carried out in rigid culture dishes which can impair the growth and phenotypic stability of the cell population. Conventional rigid culture inevitably drives a subset of cells to unwanted phenotypes and thus generates heterogeneous cell populations. Moreover, conventional culture often drives cells into senescence. Consequently, most primary cell populations are worthless for research within 3-8 passages and new tissue has to be harvested. A major part of this problem is due to the non-physiological rigidity of the tissue culture dish.

A continuously growing body of literature demonstrates that different cell types prefer a culture substrate stiffness which resembles the stiffness of their origin tissue. Growth on stiffness-adapted surfaces can maintain desired (early-passage) cell phenotypes stable throughout long-term culture in addition to keeping cells in a proliferative state. This allows to working longer with more homogeneous and physiologically relevant cell populations. Excellness offers culture dishes presenting the stiffness of heart, smooth and skeletal muscle, liver, soft connective tissue, cartilage and bone. If you need information about the most appropriate stiffness for your particular cell type, do not hesitate to contact our customer support.

ExCellness dishes as a model for diseased tissues

Tumors, fibrotic lesions and stenotic plaques are stiffer than the corresponding healthy tissues. With Excellness dishes, these mechanical environments can be modeled in vitro and compared to the normal 'soft' condition.

ExCellness substrates for drug screening

The fact that culture on tissue-soft substrates better preserves the in vivo cell phenotype is relevant for drug testing. Cell responses to drugs often depend on the expression and presentation of surface receptors. Such receptors are often lost in conventional culture.

ExCellness dishes for gentle microinjection

How many times did you break the perfect microneedle by touching the rigid cell support? You will find a soft substrate particularly useful for microinjection and patch-clamp applications because it prevents micropipette breakage when you go too far. Excellness soft substrates exhibit the optical quality of glass and polystyrene plastic that you need for high resolution micropipette targeting.