"Viable But Non-Culturable (VBNC)": Zombies of the Bacterial World

“Viable But Non-Culturable (VBNC)”: Zombies of the Bacterial World

Imagine that you want to test the efficiency of an antimicrobial treatment in inhibiting a certain bacterial pathogen. As part of the experiment, you expose the bacteria to the treatment and monitor the cultivability of the microorganism by counting the number of colony forming units (CFU) formed on culture media. If the microorganism is sensitive…

An Out of Body Experience: ex vivo Tissue Culture for Cancer Drug Screening

An Out of Body Experience: ex vivo Tissue Culture for Cancer Drug Screening

When choosing a model system for culturing tumor cells, we often think of the obvious tried and tested models. In vitro methods include cell lines that have been specifically selected to grow in culture flasks in incubators. While conveniently available, consistent and reproducible, cell lines are limited in that they may not represent the desired…