eBook: Breakthroughs and Innovations in Immunology Research - 7

Matrigengel Matrix-From Cell
Culturing to Disease Modeling
and Everything In-Between
Application-validated basement membrane extracts to advance
your immunology research
Introduction
Immunology is a rich, diverse field that involves a
wide array of elements and perspectives. In many
cases, research has heavily emphasized the details:
discovering and elucidating signaling pathways
that stimulate, suppress, or regulate immune
cell function. In other cases, immunology focuses
on a cellular-level perspective: immune cell interactions
and responses. However, the primary end
goal of each of these research perspectives is to
identify new targets for immunotherapy or novel
therapeutic strategies to overcome an erratic
immune system; otherwise considered a part of
translational medicine.
As immunology continues to uncover information
collected from the molecular and cellular perspectives,
scaling up this information to the tissue/organ
level requires a more complex modeling system
that is challenging to reproduce. There are
still many challenges at this stage, including how
to form the optimal conditions to drive stem cell
growth without differentiation and how can cells
assemble into their correct structure?
Bridging the gap between each perspective are
basement membranes, a complex composition
of extracellular matrix proteins that provide cells
with both structure and chemical signals to drive
cellular growth and differentiation. Naturally, this
membrane is ever-present-acting as a bridge or
surrounding material to provide cellular structure
to cells.
What are basement membrane
extracts?
Basement membrane extracts are a natural or synthetic,
randomly interwoven composition of extracellular
matrix proteins that are layered in intricate
sheets to provide a three-dimensional structure.
Natural basement membrane extracts are derived
from tumor cells, usually mouse sarcoma tumors,
which are rich in extracellular matrix proteins. Further
purification steps are also available to generate
a 'reduced growth factor' extract that minimizes
the chemical signals within the matrix. Composed
of laminin, fibronectin, and various other proteins,
the resulting structure forms a hydrogel that can
be used in cell proliferation, differentiation, or even
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eBook: Breakthroughs and Innovations in Immunology Research

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of eBook: Breakthroughs and Innovations in Immunology Research
