Over the last two decades, 3D cell culture development has taken off due to its potential in regenerative medicine. Yas Heidari, a Product Manager - Proteins and Cell Culture at Bio-Techne, highlighted the company’s transition to cell culture and cell biology alongside its focus on developing animal-free matrices.
Bio-Techne manufactures 90% of its reagents in-house and opened a brand new state-of-the-art GMP facility that produces fully certified animal-free GMP proteins and handles all custom manufacturing for this range. With many biopharma companies using their reagents, Heidari said they felt encouraged to expand further into the cell culture field. The heart of Bio-Techne’s cell range is the BME/ECM products and the development of the next-generation animal-free synthetic products. To meet the global demand for 3D cell culture, Bio-Techne has upscaled ECM production by building a facility in Atlanta dedicated to these efforts.
Following customer feedback and fulfilling their mission to offer flexible solutions with thousands of growth factors and related reagents for individual workflows, the company spent 3.5 years developing a new matrix, UltiMatrix. Heidari outlined the key advantages of UltiMatrix: “UltiMatrix is easy to use, with no need for batch testing and low endotoxin levels for co-cultures.” The UltiMatrix supports a wide range of organoids including intestinal organoids, brain organoids, and cardiomyocyte-derived organoids.
Beyond ECMs, Bio-Techne offers a range of small molecules to support long-term culture vitality. For example, RNA scope is a method used to detect RNA biomarkers in specific cells. However, the key breakthrough is the first animal component-free expansion media that supports IPSC lines with no difference in cell viability or genotypes. Moreover, the media supports reproducible results for up to 100 passages. Heidari added: “We can now differentiate IPSCs all the way to mature neurons completely animal and serum-free. The entire pathway is animal-free.”
Overall, Bio-Techne’s key reagents and technologies for 3D culture workflows make the company well-positioned to support researchers in the transition to animal-free culture. For safety, regulatory, and ethical reasons, moving towards animal-free models holds great promise.
