Cellendes just launched a video showing the photopolymerization process of hydrogels. It may look simple, but to arrive here thorough research, technology and science, supported by the Horizon 2020 project BRIGHTER was needed!
Cellendes is a German Life Sciences company and one of the two industrial partners of the European BRIGHTER Project. Dr. Helmut Wurst and Dr. Brigitte Angres, co-founders of the company, together with Gabriele Di Napoli, a technical assistant, support the project by offering comprehensive solutions for controlled design of cell environments in 3-D cell culture. In this context, Cellendes is designing a photopolymerizable hydrogel based on Click Chemistry.
The video shows how cell-compatible hydrogels can be formed by Thiol-ene photo crosslinking. The components included in the hydrogel mix are cell culture medium, norbornene-modified polymer, thiol-modified crosslinker and a photoinitiator.
By illuminating the hydrogel mix…
…it polymerizes!
The technology developed by Cellendes is a crucial step to attain the objective of BRIGHTER to develop engineered tissues using light sheet photolithography.