Scientists Build a Better Petri Dish

Biomedical engineers at Brown University have improved the way to culture cells. They invented a new type of petri dish that can grow cells in three dimensions with great efficiency: quickly and cheaply. The dish contains agarose that allows cells to self-assemble naturally; thus, form tissues. This improved 3D dish has few advantages over the traditional petri dishes. In conventional petri dishes, cells’ growth does not mimic the way the cells grow in the body. The shape, function and growth patterns of cells cultured in traditional petri dishes differ compared with cells grown in a 3-D environment. Since cells multiply in a 3D fashion, the new 3D dish can multiply cells just as it was in the body. Because the dish is non-adhesive, cells won’t stick to it. The dish is porous that allows particles to move in and out and has the ability to form natural cell-to-cell connections. I find this interesting because this new technology holds a lot of hope for future research. It could also save research companies millions of dollars because it will increase accuracy in laboratory testing.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20071019/hl_hsn/scientistsbuildabetterpetridish