Scaffold gradients: Finding the right environment for developing cells
Thursday, May 27, 2010 - 11:22
in Biology & Nature
People often have strong opinions on the "right" firmness of mattresses for themselves, and, as it turns out, some cell types have similar preferences for their support structures. Now a research team from the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the National Institutes of Health has developed a way to offer cells a three-dimensional scaffold that varies over a broad range of degrees of stiffness to determine where they develop best. Their recently published technique* is a way to rapidly optimize 3D cell growth media to meet the developmental needs of specific cell types for a wide variety of potential tissue-replacement therapies.