Blog

Qkine are delighted that our eel FGF-2 proteins have elicited interest in Japan, recently the Nikkei Biotechnology & Business magazine have published an article focussing on the 145 and 154 amino acid versions of eel FGF-2, and the contribution Qkine species specific growth factors can have on the cultured seafood industry.

Our latest investment in our mission at Qkine to produce the highest quality growth factors for research. The most state-of-the-art automated system which fills, labels and caps vials with minimal manual intervention.

This recent publication in collaboration with Qkine focusses on the optimization of home-brew media for the maintenance of human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs), using Qkine growth factors to allow cost-effective, practical, and reproducible culture of hiPSCs. Qkine thermostable tag-free FGF2-G3 proteins were found to be highly bioactive, necessitating an 8-fold reduction in concentration for the short (145 aa) form of FGF2-G3 in the optimized media.

Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are at the forefront of a transformative shift in modern medicine, beginning to revolutionize patient care by offering novel therapeutic treatments for a wide range of diseases. This review blog summarizes advances in the clinical use of HSCs in HSC transplantation.

Qkine is a company run by scientists, and the science is the focus of everything we do. Our theme at ISSCR this year was stress-free stem cell culture - exploring how suppliers of recombinant proteins can proactively improve the quality, availability and functionality of growth factors to generate experimental outcomes faster, easier and more efficiently.

Reflections on the dynamic ISSCR 2024 workshop on Standards for Human Stem Cell Use in Research including recommendations for growth factor supply chains for raw (ancillary materials) for cell therapy and ATMP manufacture.

Commercial sources of recombinant human GDF15 protein, in particular those purified from mammalian expression, are frequently contaminated with trace amounts of TGFβ and related proteins. These trace contaminants cause misleading experimental results due to the picomolar or even femtomolar EC50s of this family of cytokines.  Please be cautious with your source of recombinant GDF15 protein.

Specialist bioactive growth factor protein manufacturer Qkine today announced a new partnership with StemCultures, a life sciences company dedicated to developing innovative reagents that enhance the quality and efficiency of cell growth and differentiation in culture.

The manufacture of cell and gene therapy products and tissue-engineered regenerative medicine products often requires recombinant proteins such as growth factors and cytokines. These are classified as raw or ancillary materials ie. culture media components or reagents that are not intended to be included in the final product.

We've recently fully transitioned to an animal origin-free (AOF) manufacturing process for our recombinant proteins. This shift ensures the highest standards of safety, purity, and sustainability in bioproduction. By eliminating all animal-derived components, including heparin-based purification columns, we’re supporting ethical and cruelty-free biomanufacturing. Learn more about our journey to 100% AOF.

Organoids are exciting models that are rapidly becoming a hopeful platform for many medical advances such as drug screening and disease modeling. However, due to a lack of vascularization, they have limitations for future applications. This review blog summarizes several practical methods for successful organoid vascularization to date.

Cultivated meat is a nascent industry with a developing regulatory framework, with distinct regional differences. There are however some shared themes across regulatory frameworks and best practice. Within the UK and EU, cultivated meat is considered a novel food and as such falls under the scope of Regulation (EU) No. 2015/2283. In response to this classification, the Food Safety Agency commissioned an internal report into the potential hazards to the consumer associated with the production and consumption of cultured meat. Following a literature review of 154 papers discussing cultured meat as a technology, themes that apply to growth factors have been highlighted and discussed.