Abstract: The invention concerns novel methods and materials for preparing extracellular matrix (ECM) powder pre-gel and gel solutions, for example for use in organoid culture. The ECM gels demonstrate excellent physiological and mechanical properties while having the proteomic signature of endoderm tissue with specific enrichment of key ECM proteins relevant to organoid formation.

Abstract: Methods and materials for the cryopreservation of cellularised scaffolds used for therapeutic or pharmacological testing purposes that provide a cultured scaffold on which cells have been seeded, equilibrate the cellularised scaffold with a cryopreservative composition comprising culture medium and between 5 and 30% of a cryoprotectant such as DMSO, freeze the equilibrated cellularised scaffold by reducing the temperature continuously by about ?1° C./minute to about ?80° C., and store the frozen cellularised scaffold at a temperature of between ?135° C. and ?198° C.