Sourcing intermediary · Research use only
Wetware World sources cells, tissue constructs, culture devices and characterisation work from laboratories that can actually build them. You write the specification once. We circulate it, normalise what comes back, and return quotes you can put side by side.
We are an intermediary, not a manufacturer. Every listing states who makes it.
Findings from our own supplier survey. Each is traceable to a primary source.
MatTek produces reconstructed human tissue in lots and ships at 4 °C on medium-supplemented agarose gels on a fixed weekly cadence, with a four-day shelf life including transit.
MatTek EpiDerm technical specifications, 2025
Curi Bio and eNUVIO both sell casting devices into which the customer seeds their own cells, not the tissue. The one supplier that does sell formed muscle, myriamed, publishes no force specification for it.
Vendor product pages, accessed 2026
Published validation on a commercial platform reports average twitch forces of 385–1156 µN and tetanic forces to 1660 µN in iPSC-derived engineered muscle tissue.
Smith et al., 2022, PMC9445471
myriamed lists engineered skeletal and heart muscle on a public storefront at €1,400 for one tissue, 7–11 weeks. No supplier surveyed publishes a force acceptance criterion for it — the number a biohybrid build is specified against.
myriamed storefront, checked 2026-09-01; Wetware World supply landscape survey
Full methodology, the supplier capability matrix, and the source ledger are published at sourcing methodology.
Four inputs decide whether a living component can be quoted at all.
What the living part is: cell type, tissue construct, culture device, or a service performed on your material.
Dimensions, vessel, well count, anchoring, and how it must arrive — live in medium, cryopreserved, or fixed.
The measurement that decides whether a batch is acceptable. Twitch force in µN, spontaneous firing rate, TEER, viability post-thaw.
Which certificates travel with the shipment: mycoplasma, STR identity, sterility, endotoxin, karyotype, functional trace.
Six categories at launch. Each is quoted against named partner laboratories.
iPSC lines, neural progenitors, cortical neurons, myoblasts, cardiomyocytes, astrocytes, primary human cells.
Reconstructed epithelium, spheroids and organoids, engineered contractile muscle, neuromuscular junction models.
Casting plates, microfluidic and PDMS devices, multi-electrode arrays, stimulation hardware, custom microfabrication.
Expansion, differentiation, banking and cryopreservation, contract culture, assay development.
Mycoplasma, STR identity, sterility, viability, histology, imaging, electrophysiology and force phenotyping.
Validated cryogenic and 4 °C shipping, dry shippers, temperature logging, customs documentation.
Four labels. No fifth exists. We never present brokered work as our own manufacture.
| Label | Meaning |
|---|---|
| In stock | Held by a supplier as a catalogue item and shippable against a standing lead time. |
| Partner manufactured | Produced by a named partner laboratory to their published specification. We arrange supply and quality documentation. |
| Custom RFQ | No catalogue equivalent exists. We circulate your specification to capable laboratories and return comparable quotes. |
| Made by Wetware World | Produced in-house. Nothing carries this label yet, and nothing will until it is true. |
What we learn while sourcing, written down. Every figure carries its source and the date it was recorded.
| Page | Type | Sources | Updated |
|---|---|---|---|
| iPSC neuron suppliers compared, head to head A genuinely even-handed head-to-head of the main human iPSC-derived neuron suppliers — price per million, purity specification, subtype breadth, line provenance, published electrophysiology, licensing and minimum order — with a clear statement of where each one is strongest. | Comparison | 10 | 2026-09-01 |
| Biohybrid robotics: sourcing living actuators A landscape map of biohybrid actuator work — which groups build what, from which cell source, with what published force — and the honest supply-side answer: no vendor sells a living actuator, so every project is an integration job. | Guide | 14 | 2026-09-01 |
| Organ-on-chip platforms compared: Emulate, MIMETAS, CN Bio and six others Eight organ-on-chip platforms against throughput, perfusion mechanism, membrane versus scaffold-free architecture, imaging compatibility, open versus closed consumables and published tissue models. No vendor publishes consumable pricing — that column is honestly empty. | Comparison | 9 | 2026-09-01 |
| Engineered muscle force: a normalised reference table Published twitch and tetanic forces for engineered skeletal muscle, normalised to specific force in mN/mm² alongside cross-sectional area and stimulation protocol, with a citation on every row. The reference table for anyone writing a force specification. | Guide | 16 | 2026-09-01 |
| EpiDerm vs SkinEthic RHE vs EPiTRI: reconstructed human epidermis compared A head-to-head of the validated reconstructed human epidermis models — barrier function and ET-50 acceptance ranges, protocol parameters, OECD TG 439 and TG 431 validation status, formats, lead time and what is actually published about price. | Comparison | 11 | 2026-09-01 |
| Muscle actuator sourcing: C2C12, primary human, iPSC or insect Four cell sourcing routes for a biohybrid muscle actuator compared on cost, maturation time, published force, culture burden, approval burden and who will actually supply them. C2C12 is the default and it is a mouse cell line. | Guide | 10 | 2026-09-01 |
Open specification
A wetware component is not a shape plus a material. It is a shape plus a set of spatially varying property fields: cell density, fibre alignment, matrix stiffness, oxygen, morphogen gradient. The fields are the design.
WWD is a container format for exactly that, reusing existing vocabularies rather than minting new ones. It is published openly and deliberately left unpatented. A format with a single implementer is only a data structure.
| Status | Draft 0.1 |
|---|---|
| Extension | .wwd |
| Container | ZIP, from v0.1 |
| Vocabularies | Cell Ontology, NCBI Taxonomy, UBERON, ChEBI, UO, Cellosaurus, SBOL |
| Patent status | Unpatented by intent |
| Governance | Neutral custodianship planned |
If it can be built by someone, we will find out who and what it costs. If it cannot be built yet, we will tell you that instead.