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.
Every listing names the laboratory that 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 cover the catalogue. Each one names where the material comes from.
| 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 to our own specification. |
What we learn while sourcing, written down. Every figure carries its source and the date it was recorded.
| Page | Type | Sources | Updated |
|---|---|---|---|
| The operating envelope: what a living actuator needs to keep working Living actuators run at 37 °C in buffered media inside a sterile incubator, and published untethered lifetimes are measured in days. The environmental constraints, the one documented ambient exception, and what that means for device design. | Guide | 12 | 2026-09-01 |
| Cardiac or skeletal muscle: choosing an actuator substrate Cardiac muscle contracts by itself and never stops. Skeletal muscle does nothing until you tell it to, then does exactly that. Published forces, control models, lifetimes and commercial supply for both, with a citation on every claim. | Comparison | 16 | 2026-09-01 |
| Biological computing hardware: what you can actually buy, rent or collaborate on The commercial and academic landscape for neurons-as-compute: Cortical Labs CL1 and Cortical Cloud, FinalSpark Neuroplatform, and the general-purpose HD-MEA route. Substrate, electrode counts, access model and published prices, with sources and dates. | Guide | 10 | 2026-09-01 |
| Biohybrid actuator bill of materials: every line item, priced where a price exists A complete parts list for one engineered muscle actuator, from cells to force readout, with a published price where one exists and an explicit "quote only" where it does not. Verified prices: eNUVIO $440, ATCC $577, myriamed EUR 1,400. | Guide | 13 | 2026-09-01 |
| Cell culture for a robotics lab: what you actually have to build What an engineering group must acquire, learn and staff before it can make a living actuator, and the one verified price that finally makes the make-versus-buy comparison answerable: myriamed lists a finished skeletal muscle tissue at EUR 1,400. | Guide | 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: finished contractile tissue is purchasable from one supplier at EUR 1,400, but nobody sells it against a force specification, so every project is still an integration job. | Guide | 14 | 2026-09-01 |
Open specification
A wetware component 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 left unpatented, so a second implementer can build on it without asking us.
| 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.