CELL culture firm Reinnervate has expanded its network of partnerships even further across the world.
The Sedgefield life sciences company has announced another six non-exclusive regional distributors for its 3D cell culture technology alvetex in Asia-Pacific. The product – which allows cells to be grown in three dimensions rather than flat sheets – was named as one of the top 10 life science innovations of 2010 by The Scientist magazine.
Reinnervate commercial director Richard Rowling said: “The expansion of our distributor network to cover the rapidly-growing Asian and Australian markets is a great step forward for us.
“Our mission is to enable researchers around the world to use 3D cell culture routinely and through these partnership agreements researchers within the Asia-Pacific region will, for the first time, have access to our game-changing alvetex technology.”
Reinnervate span-out of the Durham University research of Professor Stefan Przyborski in 2002, and attracted a management board including chief executive Ashley Cooper in 2007.
The NETpark-based company has received investment from organisations such as Northstar and One North East.
Alvetex is a polystyrene material that was launched in November last year, and is available in a 12-well culture plate format, as well as six and 12-well inserts and a deep petri dish. It has been tested with cell types including liver, skin, cancer and stem cells.
The new distribution partnerships have been announced with Japan’s Takara Bio and Scrum Inc, as well as Shanghai Pufei Bio-Technology Co in China, Unimed Healthcare in Taiwan, KDR Biotech Co in Korea and BioScientific Pty in Australia. The product will be sold and distributed under the Reinnervate brand.
Rowling said: “In alvetex, we believe we have a unique product that is capable of revolutionising 3D cell culture and unlocking the enormous potential of this important area of scientific research. We have been hugely impressed by the level of interest in our technology since we launched alvetex in November 2010 and there appears to be growing demand for our product across the Asia-Pacific region as researchers increasingly move towards better in-vitro models that utilise 3D cell culture.”