Oxygen is the bottleneck in cell culture.
Across cell culture, tissue engineering, tissue preservation and bioreactors, the constraint is the same: getting oxygen to every cell without over-oxygenating the ones nearest the surface.
Why cultures run short of oxygen.
Oxygen gradients form
Oxygen enters culture by diffusion, so cells nearest the surface see more of it than cells deeper in the vessel or construct. The result is uneven conditions within a single culture.
Over-oxygenation is damaging
Pushing more oxygen in to fix a gradient can tip parts of the culture into over-oxygenation, generating reactive oxygen species and oxidative stress.
Scale makes it worse
Tissue engineering constructs and larger bioreactor volumes have longer diffusion distances, so oxygen becomes the limiting factor before nutrients do.
Deliver oxygen the way circulation does.
Synfera's engineered oxygen carrier is a protein supplement added to culture, based on erythrocruorin, an extracellular hemoglobin that carries oxygen without a cell around it.
Gradual, on-demand release
An oxygen carrier releases oxygen based on partial pressures, so oxygen is delivered where it has been consumed rather than pushed uniformly into the vessel.
Even distribution
More equal oxygen diffusion across the culture prevents steep gradients and the damaging over-oxygenation that comes from compensating for them.
Protection as well as delivery
The protein offers natural protection against reactive oxygen species, with free radical scavenging that reduces oxidative stress in the culture.
Practical storage
A 2 to 5 year shelf life means the supplement can sit in inventory instead of dictating the experiment schedule.
Cell culture, tissue engineering, preservation and bioreactors.
The same protein addresses the shared oxygen constraint across these workflows. For cell culture, where the working concentration is approximately 25 mg/L, our target price sits more than 25% below current market alternatives.