Company
PeCon was founded in 1980 by the two scientists Dr. Siegwald Pentz and Heide Hörler. Working together for many years at the University of Ulm in the Department of Clinical Genetics, they focused amongst others on the in vitro cultivation of primary cells, tissues and permanent cell lines.
When they started to work with cardiac muscle cells, they had to face various problems with their cultivation and behaviour, especially during microscopic observation. Incubated at ideal environmental conditions in a standard laboratory incubator, the cells showed cell division and differentiation of the contracting cells. But during microscopic observation, the amplitude and frequency of the contractions changed substantially.
It was at this point, when Siegwald Pentz and Heide Hörler started with the development of units to control temperature and CO2-concentration on the microscope. By using these incubation systems, they were able to achieve a prolonged stability of the contractions of the cardiac muscle cells during microscopic observation. The incubation systems enabled them to establish an assay for the in vitro detection of the influence of test substances on the contraction frequency and amplitude of cardiac muscle cells. This turned out to be a valuable tool to detect potential negative effects of newly synthesized chemical and pharmaceutical compounds on the cardiovascular system.
In the light of the good personal relationship with Carl Zeiss, they started a collaboration and, over many years of research, established and developed a large product range for different microscopic applications and other well-known microscope manufacturers like Leica, Olympus and Nikon. The products of PeCon GmbH are worldwide available and are being continuously improved. We constantly develop new ways and techniques in order to offer you the best and most convenient way for incubating cell and tissue cultures on the microscope.
