I am a Scientist and I study cancer and other diseases to help find treatments and cures. To do that, I need to see the disease cells, how they form, grow and what stops them from growing. 

We cannot study cancer inside the body so we must grow the cancerous cells outside the body. When cells are grown outside a body it’s called in vitro. The cancer cells need a good home to grow in, and that is exactly what PepGel provides better than anything we’ve had before.

PepGel provides a home for cells – better than anything we’ve had before. Why is it better? It gives cells room and support to grow in 3 dimensions, not 2D like in a petri dish. 

What do a spider’s web and muscle man have in common? Tissue engineers have long admired the spider’s web for its elasticity and strength. Muscles have strong fibers that can stretch and contract. That’s where the researchers at Kansas State University got their inspiration – from a spider’s web and muscle tissue. Most everything is made of proteins. Your hair, skin, eggs, cheese, and proteins are made of amino acids.

Amino acids are building blocks much like the alphabet. Different combinations make different words or in this case proteins. They experimented for a long time, using some of the amino acids from a spiders web, and some from muscle tissue. They finally got the right combination of amino acids and this unique protein formed PepGel. Now it’s being used by researchers all over the world!

PepGel is easier to use and it doesn’t have any contaminants that might ruin the results. It can become a liquid and then turned back to a gel. This is really cool because it means it can be used to deliver medicine and other good things into the body.