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Cosmo Bio

Cosmo Bio, headquartered in Tokyo, aims to provide high quality life science products from Japanese manufacturers to the whole world. The business of Cosmo Bio relies on three key beliefs: the commitment to be a driving force to the progress and development of life sciences, the aim to offer only the best customer service possible and the approach of relying on a highly mobile and efficient work force.

Exosome Purification and Characterization

One core focus area of Cosmo Bio are products for exosome purification, isolation and characterization.

Exosome are a subtype of extracellular vesicles (short: EV). Besides exosomes, these vesicles also include ectosomes, microvesicles and apoptotic bodies. They are divided into the respective subtypes according to their biogenesis. Additionally, in some case, their size, function or the method of separation may be used for this purpose.

Exosomes may further be differentiated into classical-exosomes and microvesicles. While classical-exosomes are build within multivesicular endosomes, microvesicles bud from the plasma membrane. Despite differing origins, a group of proteins seems to be common among them all: Due to their involvement within the biogenesis mechanisms of classical exosomes the tetraspanin proteins (CD9, CD63 and CD81) are shared among them. Modern research utilizes these three proteins for the characterization of classical-exosome preparation purity.

3D Collagen Scaffolds

3D collagen has a wide range of suitable uses. Originating from applications within the field of regenerative medicine research it has rapidly expanded into the field of cancer research. A key observation occured within the development of novel drug canditates: Besides showing promising results within cell culture models, their effect in animal models has been far below the expectation. This points to the issue that current cell culture does not reflect the actual tumor environment properly. Thus, 3D collagen has been a promising method of improving this discrepancy in research and enable better translation of drug effects to complexer research models.

Porcine and murine reproductive engineering

Animal models play a crucial role within modern research. However, the number of available animals can be restricted due to natural reasons such as a low fertility rate and a low sperm count. Thus, researchers have come of with ways of assiting the reproductive process of animals and established new methods and technologies described as „Assisted Reproductive Technologies“ (short: ARTs). These technologies span the different stages of the reproductive process including the cryopreservation of eggs, microinsemintation (sperm injection) as well as the nuclear transfer. This allows researchers to tackle and hopefully solve important biological questions.

While Cosmo Bio initially offered in vitro fertilization reagents for the assisted reproduction in mice with their CARD (Medium and HyperOva) and FERTIUP product lines, they have recently expanded into the area of porcine reproductive technologies. The reagents for the in vitro generation of porcine embryos includes culture kits, a porcine oocyte/embry collection medium as well as media for porcine oocyte maturation.

Fighting neurodegenerative diseases

Neurodegenerative diseases such as the Alzheimer’s Disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and the Parkinson’s Disease are becoming increasingly more important to the modern aging society. Analysing their underlying mechanism depicts a key focus of neuroscience research. In order to help researchers within this process, Cosmo Bio offers a wide range of tools for research on neurodegenerative diseases. Especially, their antibodies against common targets such as 4R-Tau, phospho-TDP-43 or alpha synuclein receive great feedback from the neuroscience community.