Protea Biosciences and InSphero AG Successful in Mass Spectrometry Imaging of 3D Microtissues

Protea Biosciences Group, Inc. and InSphero AG have jointly announced an update from their collaboration focused on mass spectrometry imaging of InSphero’s 3D InSight™ microtissues. In August 2014, Protea received microtissues from InSphero and hosted members of InSphero’s scientific team for onsite training on the handling and preparation of the microtissues. Protea has since developed workflows for processing the 3D microtissues for mass spectrometry imaging and direct analysis. In addition, Protea has generated data from 3D microtissues grown from the HCT-116 colon cancer cell line that showed the ability for mass spectrometry imaging to detect and image numerous native proteins in 3D microtissues in a single experiment, as well as putatively identify several proteins known to be present at elevated levels in colon cancer cells.

Erin Seeley, PhD, Protea’s Senior Scientist for Mass Spectrometry Imaging, will present the first data from Protea and InSphero’s collaboration at InSphero’s upcoming User Group Meetings being held in San Francisco, California on Friday, October 24th, 2014 and in Boston, Massachusetts on Thursday, November 20th, 2014. Information about the User Group Meetings can be found in the links below:

San Francisco User Group Meeting

Boston User Group Meeting

"We are pleased with the initial results from our collaboration with InSphero and look forward to presenting the data at their upcoming User Group Meetings”, stated Protea’s CEO Stephen Turner. He added, “Now that our scientists are trained on the handling of InSphero’s microtissues and workflows have been developed, we look forward to developing new applications through the combination of our respective technologies and moving forward towards commercial offerings for our pharmaceutical and biotechnology customers"

“The swift completion of the initial technology transfer puts Protea’s skilled team into a great position to generate novel and highly relevant mass spectrometry imaging data from a variety of 3D microtissue types”, said InSphero’s CEO Jan Lichtenberg. “Getting a better insight into the internal structure of microtissues is a key interest of our customers in the life-science industry. Protea’s impressive progress will be exciting news to the 3D cell-culture community at our upcoming user-group meetings.”