Commercialization of a cell stretcher/incubator device

Nowadays, most of cell biomechanics studies based on cell stretching have focused on small stretching magnitude, without the ability to visualize cell behavior and morphology during stretch. We therefor decided to build a cell stretcher/incubator providing the physiological conditions of cell culture (37°C, 5% CO2) while also allowing the application of a wide range of stretching magnitudes. The device consists of a cell stretcher/incubator designed specifically to be mounted on a microscope stage and thus, allows long term (several hours) in situ visualization of cell morphology. The commercialization of our stretcher device will facilitate researchers to investigate and characterize the biomechanics and pathophysiology of several diseases as well as allow companies specializing in biomechanical instrumentation to expand their services to a cellular scale, knowing that most of these biomechanics companies provide data collection services at the organ or tissue scale already.

Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Douglas Fudge

Student:

Oualid Haddad

Partner:

Discipline:

Biology

Sector:

Life sciences

University:

University of Guelph

Program: