Professor Schwamborn, Principal Investigator in the Developmental & Cellular Biology Group, commented, “We were interested in finding a system that allows the long-term culture of such brain organoids under conditions that provide a mild flow of medium and minimal need of manual handling. Therefore we decided to explore the capabilities of the Quasi Vivo® system in this context.”

Following initial exploration and comparison with a number of alternative ‘organ on a chip’ systems, Quasi Vivo® was chosen as a very interesting option by Professor Schwamborn and his lab, due to the systems’ ability to provide organoids with a consistent supply of media and oxygen, essential factors when undertaking 3D cell culture.

Dr Emanuel Berger, a research associate in Professor Schwamborn’s group confirmed, “the improved supply of media and oxygen and media provided by Quasi Vivo® is expected to reduce the number of dead cells in the interior of the organoids and increase the efficiency of differentiation into dopaminergic neurons. Furthermore, it will allow us to reduce the number of laborious media changes and increase reproducibility of the differentiation procedure.”

With over 70 labs worldwide now using the Quasi Vivo® systems across a wide variety of applications, this latest collaboration is one of many exciting opportunities expected to propel the use of Quasi Vivo® into drug discovery processes in the near future. Dr Malcolm Wilkinson, CEO of Kirkstall Ltd. concluded, “We are obviously delighted Professor Schwamborn and his team elected to progress their development with the Quasi Vivo® system having compared its capabilities with numerous alternatives. We are very excited to see how this project progresses.”