Your body is soft. Why would you grow your cells on hard plastic material?

In physics terms, conventional tissue culture plastic dishes are some 10'000 KiloPascal (kPa) stiff whereas most tissues in our body are four orders of magnitude softer (1-50 kPa). It emerges as a general theme that different cell types prefer a culture substrate elasticity which resembles the stiffness of their origin tissue:
-Neuronal cells grow best on brain-soft hydrogels which eliminate other, contaminating cells of the tissue preparation.
-Fibroblasts and liver cells keep their 'tissue-like' character on soft hydrogels but become diseased on plastic.
-Muscle precursor cells in culture differentiate best into functional muscle fibers on muscle-stiff hydrogels.
-Cancer cells like soft but dislike stiff hydrogels.
Amazingly, the appropriate elastic cell culture substrate alone differentiates mesenchymal stem cells into lineages that are needed for regenerative medicine (bone, cartilage, muscle, neurons) by simply mimicking the appropriate tissue stiffness in culture.
-Neuronal cells grow best on brain-soft hydrogels which eliminate other, contaminating cells of the tissue preparation.
-Fibroblasts and liver cells keep their 'tissue-like' character on soft hydrogels but become diseased on plastic.
-Muscle precursor cells in culture differentiate best into functional muscle fibers on muscle-stiff hydrogels.
-Cancer cells like soft but dislike stiff hydrogels.
Amazingly, the appropriate elastic cell culture substrate alone differentiates mesenchymal stem cells into lineages that are needed for regenerative medicine (bone, cartilage, muscle, neurons) by simply mimicking the appropriate tissue stiffness in culture.
ExCellness dishes are cell culture device with a soft polymer surface, exhibiting an elasticity that is designed to closely resemble the physical properties of body tissue. The basis of our product is a sterile, transparent, elastic cell culture substrate that makes cells 'feeling at home'.
ExCellness has gained years of experience in generating stable, elastic cell culture substrates with a wide range of stiffness/softness (2~100 kPa). With our expertise, we can provide a large series of products that retain all advantages of conventional plastic culture vessels but additionally offer a biomimetic environment through a defined elastic component.
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