Top 10 In Vitro Services

In biology, in vitro tests cover all the assays and experiments perform with plants, microorganisms or biological molecules in a controlled environment outside of their biological context.

The complexity of living organisms includes multiple interactions between countless components like proteins, genes, RNA molecules, organic molecules and inorganic ions. In addition, these interactions are also under the influence of external factors of the environment like light, temperature or other organisms. This extreme complexity makes it difficult to focus on the interaction of a limited number of components. Thus, the primary advantage of in vitro assays is to simplify the study by focusing on one sort of cell to identify what you are looking for, antibodies or other specific proteins for example.

Therefore, in vitro services have a lot of applications in medical, pharmaceutical or biological fields.

© Umberto Salvagnin, Cell Culture, Flickr

Oncology, in particular, uses cell culture as models, but it cannot completely replace in vivo studies because all the interactions existing within a complex organism are not taken into account as Drs Wesserling and Drewa expose in their article in the Journal of Tissue Science & Engineering.

In pharmacology, in vitro tests are part of the primary test phase of preclinical assays for the development of a new drug to determine its properties, its toxicity, the stability of the cell strain model etc. See our article about preclinical development plans.

In vitro techniques are also applied to produce pharmaceutical products like antibiotics or antigens for vaccine as Vaccines Europe explains in its “How are vaccines produced?”article.

In the medical and veterinary fields, there is a wide range of in vitro tests for diagnostics and the monitoring of clinical status by testing the tissue sample or bodily fluids. It can refer to microbial culture to identify pathogens, genetic testing, blood testing.

It is almost certain that you need or will in vitro services whether it is for research, medical or industrial purposes. Here you can find a selection of services which can be useful for you.