Best Practices for Pipetting 3D Cell Culture Hydrogels

Overview

Drug discovery and stem-cell based therapies continue to be areas of interest in the field of scientific research. Within these specialized areas of study is a growing interest in three-dimensional (3D) cell cultures. However, the preparation of these cell cultures can be a difficult process, due in part to the following:  

• Low reproducibility between samples
• Inadequate mixing practices 
• Cross-contamination
• Higher rates of variation among experiments  

A major contributor to the listed issues can be poor pipetting technique. Pipetting and mixing viscous hydrogels and sensitive cells can be especially challenging. Picus^® 2 pipettes are ideal for the preparation of hydrogels as they enable standardization of the sample preparation workflow, erasing the potential negative impact of personal pipetting practices. For 3D cell cultures such as spheroid applications, GrowDex^® is an excellent choice of hydrogel: it is easy to use, animal-free, and has no batch-to-batch variation. In contrast to many other hydrogels, GrowDex^® does not require polymerization, allowing it to be handled at room temperature - making the product easy to work with and promoting reproducible results. 

• Document type: Application Note
• Page count: 8
• Read time: 11 minutes

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