Most of the cell culture assays and the cellular tests performed in research laboratories, pharmaceutical industries or screening platforms are operated on plastic (or glass) dishes, which rigidities are about gigapascal (GPa). This physical environment is a billion times stiffer than our organs, which rigidities span between few Pa and few tens of kPa. This shortcoming is a true limitation, as many studies have proved that the mechanical properties of the micro-environment deeply impacts almost every aspect of cell behavior, including transcriptional regulation, protein synthesis, endocytosis or cytoskeleton organization. Thus biological results obtained from standard cell culture assays are biased by the lack of mechanical relevance of the in vitro culture devices.
Cell & Soft fills this gap by providing ready-to-use mechano-mimetic culture plates that can even mimic mechanical heterogeneities as micron to millimeter-scaled rigidity gradients. Cell & Soft delivers pre-coated plates and guarantees a full control of the surface chemistry. Unique to Cell & Soft patented plates are the robust and reproducible chemo-mechanical culture environments in standard ANSI/SBS format, from BP35 dishes to 96 wells microplates, with identical handling and use as plastic plates.
Cell & Soft is currently supported by an incubator program from a French TTO (SATT Linksium Grenoble, France). Launching planned soon, in Autumn 2018!
