Cell Culture In A Chip

Bellco Glass, Inc., has recently been licensed to manufacture and distribute the newly patented GenesisChip. The GenesisChip is the latest creation of Mark Lyles, winner of the Mind Science Award for his invention of ceramic polymer dental fillings. Lyles's latest venture is the application of glass and ceramic polymers to cell culture scaffolds. His patented PRIMM (Polymer Rigid Inorganic Matrix Material) resolves one of the important problems that interferes with cell growth in plastic scaffolds. The Bellco GenesisChip As Lyles explains, plastics are hydrophobic and must be pretreated to have a charged hydrophilic surface. Glass, however, is an amorphous silica that forms tetrahedral bonds capable of having a high negative charge. This negative charge holds water to the surface of the chip, keeping the scaffold as well as the tissue culture hydrated. In addition to its negative polarity, the polymer material is also very strong and highly porous. In fact, 97% of the GenesisChip is empty space. The void space allows cells to grow at great densities within the matrix while maintaining cell-to-cell communication. As many as 100 million cells can grow in a single cubic centimeter of the chip. The rigid scaffold keeps protein's quaternary structure from being distorted and keeps growth factors and cytokines from being diluted into media. Surface receptors and integrins are also dispersed throughout the matrix, which does not occur on a monolayer culture. Dr. David Carnes, researcher at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, has used the GenesisChip to culture osteoblasts in three dimensions. He was able to grow bone cells at high densities and attributes this to the high porosity and tortuous surface of the chip. "I can say with confidence that it is a very good way of growing large numbers of cells in a small space," said Carnes. Carnes also suggested that the chip would be useful for maintaining cultures in simulated microgravity experiments because of its ability to hold cells and media within a rigid architecture during rotation of the culture apparatus. Researchers at the University of Oregon Health Science Center recently published a paper on their work with the GenesisChip1 The authors found that the ceramic construct demonstrated an increasing number of viable cells from 0 to 25 days, then a decreasing number from 25 to 33 days, reflecting an approximate 20-fold increase in cell number and fivefold increase when compared to a monolayer of similar dimensions. Scanning electron microscopic analysis showed that the fused fiber construct "contained a significant void volume available for cell migration, attachment and proliferation as well as for in vivo vascular penetration." The study also noted that viable cells were distributed throughout the three-dimensional structure and that the unique nature of the construct resulted in different cell attachment morphology. Richard LeBaron, assistant professor at the University of Texas, San Antonio, cited one additional benefit of the chip technology. LeBaron, who has used the chip since 1992 and served as a consultant to the company that developed it, suggested that the chip could be recycled for repeated use. Because the chip material can withstand autoclaving, the benefit of using the GenesisChip in favor of disposable scaffolds becomes a matter not only of cost efficiency but of environmental safety as well. R. Malekzadeh et al., "Isolation of Human Osteoblast-Like Cells and In Vitro Amplification for Tissue Engineering", Journal of Periodontal Research, 69:1256-61, 1998. The author, Brent Johnson, can be contacted at bjohnson@the-scientist.com. For more information, please contact Bellco at (800) 257-7043, or visit the company web site at www.bellcoglass.com.

Cell Culture In A Chip

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