'Novel surface triples stem-cell growth in culture'

Branco Weiss fellow Krishanu Saha has just had another article published, though this time on research completed in association with Whitehead Institute and MIT scientists. The article details how they have created a surface capable of tripling the number of human embryonic stem (ES) and induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells that can be grown in culture by current methods. Use of this novel surface also eliminates the need for layers of mouse “feeder cells”to support ES- and iPS-cell growth.

“Polystyrene is the most common cell culture surface used in labs, and to be able to do a simple treatment and get something that works better than the mouse feeder layers is great and potentially has a lot of utility,”says Daniel Anderson, Associate Professor in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences & Technology.

For more information you can access a summary, though the full article, published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), does not have open access.