Trevigen, Inc. Releases Cell Line Producing a Critical Ingredient for the Propagation of Organoid Cultures

Gaithersburg, MD (Jan. 9, 2016) Trevigen, Inc. furthers its commitment to supply innovative research products for 3-D culture by releasing HA-R-Spondin-Fc293T cells, used to produce purified Roof plate specific Spondin-1 (R-Spondin 1 or RSPO1) and RSPO1 conditioned media. RSPO1 is the critical ingredient used in the maintenance and proliferation of mouse and human organoid progenitor stem cells. To date, positive results have been reported with stem cells of gastric, colonic, intestinal, pancreatic and liver lineage by thought leaders in the industry such as Dr. Hans Clevers (Hubrecht Institute) and Dr. Calvin Kuo (Stanford University).

These cells can be passaged indefinitely and can produce unlimited amount of RSPO1 protein, allowing laboratories conducting research with organoids to save time and money. The RSPO1 cells are authenticated by Trevigen and tested to be free from mouse or human pathogenic agents.

Greater than 90% of drugs entering clinical trials fail. More often than not compounds that look promising after in vitro screening fail after in vivo analysis. The unreliability of in vitro assays to predict in vivo outcomes is a major contributor to the increasing expense of the discovery process. It is estimated that the average cost to bring a drug to market is now five billion dollars (Forbes, 2014). Thought leaders postulate that 3-D organoid culture models more closely emulate in vivo conditions, an advance over 2-D culture for cancer research, drug screening, toxicology studies, regenerative medicine and host/disease pathology research. By introducing the first commercially available HA-R-Spondin-Fc293T cell line to the market, Trevigen makes a positive step toward the adoption of 3-D culture in drug screening and other cell based research applications.