£75,000 grant helping to cultivate cell technology

Dec 12 2007 The Journal

A SCIENCE company is set to take its revolutionary cell culture technology to the next level.

Reinnervate, a spinout company from Durham University, was established in 2002 to commercialise research in cell biology.

Earlier this year, the firm announced it had developed a new technology for growing stem cells in the laboratory.

To develop this project further, the firm has secured a £75,000 grant from One NorthEast.

The funding will help Reinnervate research ways of adapting the technology into a format that can be used routinely by biotechnologists.

Dr Stefan Przyborski, Reinnervate’s director and chief scientific officer, said: "We were delighted to receive this funding from One NorthEast as it will allow us to continue building the business and fulfil our ambition of taking the product to market."

One NorthEast senior R&D finance manager Will Adams said: "The North-East is already recognised as having world class expertise in stem cell research, and work carried out in our local universities and in spinout companies such as Reinnervate could have a major impact in the fight against diseases in future decades."

Reinnervate’s technology allows cells to be cultivated in realistic three dimensional conditions closer to the way cells are grown in tissues within the human body, rather than the traditional flat surface of a Petri dish currently used in most research laboratories.

The technology involves a highly porous polystyrene scaffold developed by Dr Stefan Przyborski and Dr Neil Cameron for routine cell culture applications.