By Dr. Christof Knocke, European Business Manager, Dasgip AG
SubscribeDASGIP Talk on Dynamic Cultivation of Stem Cells at Fraunhofer Life Science Symposium (22 - 24 October 2006) in Leipzig
At the first Life Science Symposium of the Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology (IZI) Dr. Christof Knocke, European Business Manager at the Bioreactor company DASGIP AG, Juelich (Germany), will give a talk on the dynamic cultivation of stem cells.
Medical relevance of human embryonic stem cells relies critically on the cells' ability to proliferate without changes to their pluripotency. That is why researchers like Peter Zandstra from the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto in Canada, have started to cultivate stem cells under controlled conditions.
The so called "dynamic cultivation" means taking care and using critical parameters for cell growth as e.g. oxygen tension, pH or carbon dioxide to get better, traceable and reproducible results. So, these old colleagues of classic cultivation technology seem to be considered as new allies driving stem cell expansion.
In frame of the "New Industrial Technology Platforms" session on Sunday, 22 October (12.30-1.30 pm) Knocke will provide the audience with a glimpse of the impact of some critical parameters on stem cell proliferation. He also will stress typical problems when changing from the static to the dynamic cultivation and show how these problems may be solved.
About 250 participants are expected to attend the first Life Science Symposium in Leipzig (22-24 October), which is organized by the newest member of the Fraunhofer familiy, the Fraunhofer Institute IZI, in cooperation with the University of Leipzig.
The scientific program covers biochemical cognitions as well as new results in cell therapy. Stefan Krauss from the Rikshospitalet University Hospital (Norway), for instance, will give a talk on "Wnt Signalling in Cortical Neural Stem Cells: Lessons from In Vivo Studies for In Vitro Approaches" while Michael Ott from the Hanover Medical School (Germany) will report about "Resources and Concepts for Cellular Therapies in Liver Disease".
Industrial aspects will be discussed, too, as in the presentation of Karoly Nikolich Stanford University (USA), about "Nerve Regeneration as a Challenge for Pharmaceutical Discovery and Development". The whole scientific program and more coneference information are provided at the conference website (http://www.fs-leipzig.com).
Juelich (Germany) - 19 October, 2006