UltraSM nanoporous membrane for cellular co-culture

Market Application & Need

Miniaturization has successfully been applied to DNA and protein assays, but not to cell culture assays.  Limitations in current membrane technology have restricted common drug permeability and co-culture assays to 6 to 96-well microplate formats.  Moving to 384 or 1536-well microarray formats would increase assay throughput and minimize sample and reagent requirements.

SiMPore Product

SiMPore is developing a 16-well cell culture microarray format incorporating SiMPore’s nanoporous, ultrathin, silicon membrane technology.  The microarray will have 384-well spacing for use with traditional cover glasses (co-culture studies) or automated plate readers (drug permeability studies).

SiMPore Advantages

• Standardized, miniaturized approach to cell culture studies using small sample and reagent volumes.
• Higher permeability rates will enable demonstration of permeability changes at lower doses or at earlier times after application.
• Thinner membrane and lower electrical resistance will reduce instances where drug is incorrectly labeled as poorly permeable.
• Less loss and molecular thinness will allow cells in co-culture experiments to be physically separated but able to communicate.
• Optical transparency of the membrane will allow visualization under microscopes including fluorescence-based studies.

Please contact Jane Hasselkus, VP of Sales & Marketing (jhasselkus@simpore.com) if you are interested in partnering with SiMPore in this area.