We have now officially launched on our first commercial project, funded by a grant from Innovate UK's ICURe Follow-on-Fund.
Over the coming months, this funding will allow us to design, test, and optimise a range of synthetic hydrogel products for 3D cell culture. This will include collaborations with selected early adopters who will provide invaluable feedback on our first set of products. We plan to use this feedback to help us fine-tune each hydrogel formulation, so that we can be sure they will address all our customers' unmet needs.
Behind this, our passion for reducing, replacing, and refining the use of animals in research is our driving force. We hope that by bringing an alternative to the market for animal-derived hydrogels (such as those derived from Engelbreth-Holm-Swarm (EHS) mouse sarcoma), we can help to reduce, and eventually replace, the use of animals and animal-derived materials in drug discovery and investigative research.
Welcoming Viola to the team!
We are also delighted to have welcomed Viola Erdelyi to the team this week. Viola will be working as Product Development Technologist and will be working alongside John to help optimise the different PeptiMatrix products we will be developing in the coming months.
Acknowledgements
Of course, none of this would have been possible without the continued support of Prof Cathy Merry, as well as all our past funders including NC3Rs and BBSRC.
I'd also like to thank Clive Roper for his business mentorship throughout the ICURe programme, as well as Jonny Gibbons and James Duncan for their support from the UoN side.
There are, of course, many more who have contributed to the success of PeptiMatrix. Science is a collaborative endeavour, and I couldn't have done this without the help and support from Jennifer Ashworth, Neil Thomas, Kamal Badiani, and many more who continue to support the project.
Thank you to everyone past and present, and I'm looking forward to what the future may now bring!
Get in touch!
If you are interested in being one of the first to trial the latest innovation in 3D cell culture, please get in touch! You can reach me at john.curd@peptimatrix.com or by visiting our contact page.