NASA's Johnson Space Center seeks interested parties for the commercialization of the High Density Spot Seeding (HDSS) method to create 2D and 3D tissue models. This method can potentially be used to develop tissue models for a variety of applications, including wound treatment, therapy, and tissue modeling of skeletal muscle, cardiac muscle, nerve, and bone. The HDSS technique has an easy four-step method that does not require expensive reagents, such as specialized serum or growth factors, and compared to traditional methods, HDSS has the potential to yield superior-quality tissue samples.
This technology is a simple, reproducible, and cost-effective process that creates 2D and 3D human tissue formations. The method entails the spot seeding of cells at a specific concentration onto a Petri dish, but without the need of extracellular matrix components. Cells are then incubated to allow attachment. The culture is rinsed with a medium to remove unattached cells, and a growth medium is added to enable the cells at the periphery of the spot to proliferate and differentiate outward from the center cells. This pattern of growth results in a 2D model of dense, organized, mature cells. It is proposed that the 2D formations can be stacked one on another via a lamination process to create 3D tissues.
By forming tissue using this method, the technology enables the creation of unique models for research and development, pharmaceutical development, and perhaps even regenerative medicine. For instance, for basic research and development, the study of mechanistic pathways involved in normal and/or diseased tissue becomes possible. This technology can also be used as an in-vitro tissue model for drug screening and toxicology testing in the pharmaceutical development field. The HDSS method may be advantageous for high-throughput screening assays, where a large volume of screenings is done simultaneously.
NASA is actively seeking licensees to commercialize this technology. Please contact Michelle P. Lewis at