{"id":466928,"date":"2010-03-24T11:37:05","date_gmt":"2010-03-24T15:37:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.technologytransfertactics.com\/content\/?p=6197"},"modified":"2010-03-24T11:37:05","modified_gmt":"2010-03-24T15:37:05","slug":"rice-u-texas-develop-3-d-cell-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/466928","title":{"rendered":"Rice, U-Texas develop 3-D cell culture"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Scientists from Texas Medical Center in Houston have unveiled a technique for growing 3-D cell cultures, a technological leap from the flat petri dish that could save millions of dollars in drug-testing costs. The research is reported in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/nnano\/journal\/vaop\/ncurrent\/abs\/nnano.2010.23.html\" ><em>Nature Nanotechnology<\/em><\/a>. The 3-D technique, which is easy for most labs to set up immediately, uses magnetic forces to levitate cells while they divide and grow. Compared with cell cultures grown on flat surfaces, the 3-D cell cultures tend to form tissues that more closely resemble those inside the body. &#8220;The body is 3-D, and cultures that more closely resemble native tissue are expected to provide better results for preclinical drug tests,&#8221; says study co-author Tom Killian, PhD, associate professor of physics at Rice University. &#8220;If you could improve the accuracy of early drug screenings by just 10%, it&#8217;s estimated you could save as much as $100 million per drug.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>For cancer research, the invisible scaffold created by the magnetic field goes beyond its potential for producing cell cultures that better resemble actual tumors, says co-author Wadih Arap, PhD, professor in the David H. Koch Center at The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. To make cells levitate, the research team modified a combination of gold nanoparticles and engineered viral particles called phages that was developed in Arap&#8217;s lab. The targeted &#8220;nanoshuttle&#8221; can deliver payloads to specific organs or tissues.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A logical next step for us will be to use this additional magnetic property in targeted ways to explore possible applications in the imaging and treatment of tumors,&#8221; Arap says. The 3-D modeling raises another interesting long-term possibility. Researchers also note the technology may be useful in building better models of human organs. The start-up Nano3D Biosciences, which licensed the technology from Rice and M.D. Anderson, is conducting additional tests to compare how the new method stacks up against existing methods of growing 3-D cell cultures.<\/p>\n<p>Source:\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencedaily.com\/releases\/2010\/03\/100315162056.htm\" >Science Daily<br \/>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<p><br class=\"spacer_\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scientists from Texas Medical Center in Houston have unveiled a technique for growing 3-D cell cultures, a technological leap from the flat petri dish that could save millions of dollars in drug-testing costs. The research is reported in Nature Nanotechnology. The 3-D technique, which is easy for most labs to set up immediately, uses magnetic [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-466928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=466928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466928\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}