HOT Co-Cultures

Why Co-Cultures?

The immune system's major task is to provide all other tissues with sufficient protection against infection. Prerequisite for this is a cellular dialogue between the cells of the immune system and those of the tissues. This is accomplished by the release of messenger substances (mediators, cytokines) that are synthesized in response to various stimuli. This results in a complex regulation network the most important parts of which can excellently be investigated in vitro.

Download Info Co-Culture systems

For this purpose complex cell culture models have been developed in the past two decades and are offered now by HOT Screen GmbH, each including two compartments, one for the immune cells and the other for the cells from different tissues. These cells may be incubated with the test substances under a variety of conditions. The substance effects on the cellular interactions between the two compartments are detected by measuring those mediators or cellular products that can be considered the most specific for each of the cell types in culture. By choosing different activating signals and time points for stimulation it is possible to create a variety of culture conditions, e.g. to simulate pathogenetically relevant situations.

Another important aspect of immunologically active drugs given perorally is their absorbability by the intestinal epithelium. HOT Screen developed a co-culture system consisting of cells of the human immune system and a terminally differentiated, fully functional human gut epithelium (derived from CaCo-2 cells). This complex culture system allows a detailed investigation of not only the bio-availability of test substances but also their influence on the regulatory interactions between these two tissues in situations of intestinal immune activation.
Also in these Co-Culture systems we exclusively use human cells, thus another gap between simple cell culture models and animal studies, or clinical trials respectively, can be closed.

Test systems currently available at HOT Screen GmbH