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February 26, 2005
Testing cell culturing with shaped biofoam
From monday we start sterilising the foams Nikki has bee shaping in the studio. The porosity of this material makes it fragile, and difficult to work with. We can then start testing how cells will respond to these forms. We are using primary cell lines, these come from consenting donors, and are differentiated - which means they have passed the point of no return, they are bone cells (they are osteoblasts, or bone-producing cells). This is in contrast to stem cells, which have the potential to become bone tissue, or heart tissue, indeed any tissue. A third option would have been an immortalised cell line, these can be bought from a cell bank, and like cancerous cells do not expire after any amount of division. The primary cell line we are using are closest in behaviour to the samples we expect to have with our donor couple, and we also feel we are on firmer ground ethtically with these.
At the same time we are sourcing samples of a stronger material from the US, and also exploring rapid prototyping processes. Here the form will be "printed" layer by layer, using a 3-D computer model. In our current approach the form of the bioctive scaffold is carved, in the second it is built from scratch. Here is an image from the studio:
Posted by tobie at February 26, 2005 10:12 AM