Tightly packed (confluent) Vero cells are shown on an array of Hillex™ microcarrier beads.

World Leader in Microcarrier Technology

Since 1984 SoloHill Engineering, Inc. has been inventing, developing, manufacturing, and selling microcarrier beads of advanced types. All currently available models have a solid core of either cross-linked polystyrene or modified polystyrene. Coatings such as glass, collagen (gelatin), cationic surface treatment, and recombinant proteins such as ProNectin^® F are applied to promote attachment and growth of mammalian cells. The chemical constituents of the core can be adjusted to vary specific gravity from 1.02 – 1.10. These solid beads survive autoclaving up to 131° C and gamma irradiation with no deleterious effects.

Technical support is provided to our customers by telephone, e-mail, on-site visits, and this includes protocol development in our own fully functional cell culture labs. Our professional staff is pleased to assist customers to initiate cell culture and tissue culture projects with SoloHill microcarriers, or to assist in technology conversion (changing to bioreactors). SoloHill is a 'user friendly' business partner: a real person will answer the phone or your e-mail, we have a useful and frequently updated website, and we accept credit cards for purchases.

Ongoing research and development has enabled SoloHill to stay ahead of the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE)-driven concerns that surround both the human health and animal health cell culture industries. We currently provide a wide variety of animal protein-free microcarriers as well as animal protein-containing microcarriers. New core materials with new coatings are continuously under development and include nonsolid substrates, synthetic peptide, and other coatings.

Efficient harvest of end products (lytic virus or expressed product) or whole, infected cells is THE hallmark of SoloHill microcarriers. Our solid, non porous microcarriers allow quick and easy cell removal. This characteristic contributes to excellent scale-up and bead-to-bead transfer characteristics.