Corning Salutes 100th Anniversary of Cell Culture Science

Corning Incorporated is hosting a series of activities throughout 2007 to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of Cell Culture and the company’s role in this fascinating technology.

Cell culture began a century ago with the publication of Ross Harrison’s findings on the growth of nerve fibers in vitro. With this simple experiment, he established the methodology of tissue culture and cell culture was on its way to becoming one of the most important and widely used tools in the life sciences.

The very first cell culture flask, developed by Alexis Carrel in 1923, was made from Corning’s PYREX^® glass. Since then Corning has continued to innovate and manufacture both glass and plastic culture vessels, pipets, filters, cryogenic vials, centrifuge tubes and other products used in cell culture facilities. Corning products are now used worldwide by universities, drug manufacturers and biotech companies to culture cells in their research or production programs.

Today, cell culture is essential for research in cell biology, virology, cancer, drug screening and development and toxicity testing. It has also become the cornerstone of the biotech industry where cultured cells are now routinely used for producing vaccines, monoclonal antibodies, and protein-based drugs worth many billions of dollars each year.

Most importantly, cell culture is helping to improve the lives of people everywhere. From the original Salk polio vaccine (for which the virus was grown in 5 liter Corning PYREX Povitsky bottles), to living skin substitutes (produced in 75mm diameter Corning Transwell^® inserts) used in treating burns, cell culture today directly impacts all of us.

Looking to the future, the tremendous potential of stem cells and gene therapy is just beginning to be understood. Achieving more milestones will require more innovation and invention. Corning is committed to help researchers make this happen by providing innovative new products like the HYPERflask™, which allows researchers to realize a log scale increase in cell yield, the Low Profile Flask with a space saving design within a standard flask footprint, and the Corning EPIC^® System, an exciting new technology that brings label-free screening to HTS.

Corning will be offering cell culture history webinars throughout the year and will make them available on CD. Corning will be hosting raffles for an LCD TV (made with Corning display glass) and other prizes both online and at industry trade shows and conferences through December. Researchers can participate in these and many more activities that will be added as the year progresses by visiting Corning’s web site via the article webpage.