3D Cell Culture Firm Reinnervate Limited and Specialist Oncology CRO Oncotest GmbH Enter Collaboration Agreement
Under the terms of the partnership, Oncotest will offer its clients automated assays based on Alvetex®Scaffold technology, complementing their well known 3D Tumour Clonogenic Assay technology.
Prof. Stefan Przyborski, founder and CSO of Reinnervate described the benefits of the 96 well plates for cancer cell cytotoxicity testing; ‘The Alvetex®Scaffold 96 well plate allows scientists to grow tumour cells in 3D, better mimicking the way these cells grow in vivo. It is very easy to start using 3D cell culture with Alvetex® technology. You simply seed the cells, add your existing media and place in your standard incubator. There is no struggling with new and sometimes cumbersome protocols required with other 3D technologies such as collagen gels or hanging drops’. He then went on to say; ‘We have shown that the Alvetex®Scaffold 96 well plates work seamlessly with automated platforms and standard cell health assays such as MTT, XTT, Cell Titer-Glo® and many others.’
Prof. Heiner Fiebig, founder and CEO of Oncotest said, ‘We are very pleased to be able to offer cancer cell cytotoxicity assays using Alvetex®Scaffold 96 well plates to our clients. We have looked at several different technologies and found Alvetex®Scaffold to be the simplest and most reliable solution. We particularly value the ease of use, ability to automate the entire workflow and the ability to isolate protein and RNA from the treated cells to study drug effects post-treatment. The combination of Alvetex®Scaffold, state-of-the-art co-culture techniques and our automated 96 well 3D assay technology will also potentially allow the study of effects of anti-cancer molecules which target parts of the tumour microenvironment. This powerful ex vivo culture system will be a very exciting new tool for our clients. The assay platform can be used with both Oncotest’s patient-derived tumour xenografts (as an ex vivo assay) and for established tumour cell lines (as an in vitro assay)’.
Oncotest will begin offering services immediately to existing clients, and will offer a new introductory screening service for companies new to 3D cell culture who want to try out 3D culture based oncology services.
Financial terms were not disclosed.
For more information please visit www.reinnervate.com or www.oncotest.de
For further information, please contact
Ashley Cooper, Chief Executive Officer +44 (0)1740 625266
info@reinnervate.com
David Robinson
Alto Marketing
+44 (0) 1489 557672
davidr@alto-marketing
Torsten Giesemann
Oncotest GmbH
+49 (0) 761 5155943
torsten.giesemann@oncotest.de
About Reinnervate Ltd
Reinnervate is an innovative life sciences company dedicated to making routine 3D cell culture a reality for researchers in academia and in the pharmaceutical and related industries.
Reinnervate develops, manufactures and sells products for 3D cell culture. During 2012 Reinnervate has launched several new formats including 24 and 96 well plates and developed specialist applications for scientists working in the fields of cancer research, cell migration/invasion and stem cell culture/expansion.
Reinnervate was founded in 2002 based on the pioneering research of Professor Stefan Przyborski and his lab at Durham University, UK, and is funded by NorthStar Equity Investors (NSEI), management and private investors.
About Alvetex®Scaffold
Alvetex®Scaffold is a unique polystyrene material that provides a robust and inert scaffold for cells to grow and form complex 3D structures in vitro, mimicking the normal growth and formation of tissues in the body. Reinnervate has extensively tested and validated Alvetex®Scaffold with a large number of cell types, including liver, skin, cancer and stem cells, all of which have important applications in basic research into cell development, disease modelling and drug safety screening.
Alvetex®Scaffold has been launched globally in several formats: a 12-well culture plate, 24-well culture plate, 96 well plate, 6-well and 12-well inserts. These formats enable scientists to construct different 3D cell culture models and assays. These include screening of novel drugs / drug combinations on 3D culture and co-culture models, co-culture to study cell-cell or cell-matrix interactions, the growth of cells at the air-liquid interface and the long-term culture of cells. Visit www.reinnervate.com for a full list of applications.
Alvetex®Scaffold was voted as one of the top 100 innovative products of 2011 at the R&D 100 awards and was named among the winners of The Scientist magazine’s “Top 10 Life Science Innovations of 2010”.
See the company videos - http://www.reinnervate.com/alvetex/videos
See the latest campaign - http://www.reinnervate.com/campaign
About Oncotest
Oncotest is a CRO dedicated to the preclinical profiling of novel anti-cancer molecules, facilitating the optimal planning of clinical trials. Promising indications, novel combinations of anti-cancer molecules and potential biomarkers are identified using a combination of in vitro and in vivo tests with Oncotest’s extensively characterized collection of more than 400 unique patient-derived tumour xenografts (PDX) propagated in nude mice. PDX are known to replicate patient tumour responses to anti-cancer drugs to a high degree. Ex vivo 3D assays are an important component of Oncotest’s assay portfolio and standard panels of up to 200 PDX are offered for 3D assay campaigns. Clients benefit from Oncotest’s industry-leading experience.
Oncotest, based in Freiburg, Germany, was founded in 1993 by Prof. Heiner Fiebig, a clinical oncologist who pioneered the use of PDX for anti-cancer drug discovery and development. The company is focussed on preclinical pharmacology of anti-cancer agents and works with large pharmaceutical and biotech companies.
www.oncotest.de