 Cultivating New Cell Solutions
Traditionally, cells have been painstakingly cultivated in shallow glass or plastic “Petri” dishes. Frustrations with the limitations of this two-dimensional format led Robin Felder, professor of pathology at U.Va., to seek new cell culturing methods.
Felder and his colleagues combined their understanding of cell biology and engineering in the Medical Automation Research Center to develop an automated, three-dimensional cell culturing process. This innovative approach employs the use of magnetic particles to gently suspend and cultivate highly sensitive cell lines.
“By adopting this new technology in our laboratories, we have seen significant improvement in cell phenotype, performance, and relevance to the biological questions we are addressing, as well as a reduction in our cell culture costs,” says Felder.
The obvious commercial applications for this invention prompted Felder to bring his technology to the Darden Business School, where Uday Gupta was completing an M.B.A. Gupta worked with Felder to create a business plan, which they entered into Darden’s Business Plan Competition. Through this contest, their burgeoning company—Global Cell Solutions (GCS)—earned a spot in the Batten Incubator. The Incubator provided the necessary space and infrastructure for GCS as well as facilitated a grant from the National Cancer Institute to further their unique Global Eukaryotic Microcarrier (GEM), a substrate for culturing cells, and BioLevitator, a complementary and novel bench-top cell culture system.
Next GCS entered the T100 Alumni Mentoring Program. T100 matches start-up companies with U.Va. alumni who are business experts in order to provide guidance and financial assistance to companies as they evolve from concept to commercialization.
“The T100 mentoring team was extremely invaluable,” says Gupta, now president of GCS. “There are great ideas and discoveries coming out of the University but they need to be nurtured with the right people—the right business team. Our T100 team offered a collection of expertise that provided us with leverage to push the company forward, and equally important to avoid pitfalls.” READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Recent News:
GLOBAL CELL SOLUTIONS (GCS) ANNOUNCES PARTNERSHIP (05.18.07) GCS, a U.Va. startup company focusing on a unique approach to 3D cell culture, has announced that it will collaborate with Hamilton Company to develop and market its BioLeviator™ bench top cell culture system in conjunction with its 3D cell culture substrate, the GEM™.
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