The Petri Dish Reinvented

Biomedical engineers in Rhode Island have invented a new Petri dish, promising a revolution in the lab equipment field of Petri dishes. The 3D Petri dish will be a really valuable piece of medical laboratory equipment, particularly to medical microbiology. The new Petri dish allows cell reproduction to occur in three dimensions, producing more cells quickly and cheaply.

These new Petri dishes will be a real aid to the drug development research and tissue transplantation sciences, say the biomedical engineers at Brown University in Providence, R.I., responsible for the invention and development of the new Petri dish.

In conventional Petri dishes currrently on the market, cells stick to the bottom and spread out as they multiply. The 3D Petri dish allows cells to assemble in a way that replicates natural forming of cells and microtissues. The new 3-D Petri dish has a number of features that allow more normal cell and tissue development. The dish is porous, which allows nutrients and waste to circulate. It's non-adhesive, so cells don't stick to it. Tiny recesses in the bottom of the dish promote the formation of natural cell-to-cell connections, a process that's not possible in conventional Petri dishes, the scientists explained in an article published in the journal Tissue Engineering.