Change the medium.
Keep every spheroid.
An 18-well, slide-format 3D culture device with a built-in pipetting pocket. An internal partition keeps the pipette tip and its flow away from the microwells, so spheroids and organoids stay where you seeded them.
3D culture fails quietly, one medium change at a time.
Spheroids and organoids sit loose in their wells. Every aspiration pulls on them. Over a multi-week culture some lift out, some fuse, and each well drifts a little further from its neighbours. By the endpoint, part of the variability in your data comes from handling rather than biology.
Conventional microwell or U-bottom plate
PortPocket well
One well, two zones.
Each of the 18 wells is divided by a curved internal wall. On one side, a field of U-bottom microwells holds the culture. On the other, a deeper, lens-shaped pocket takes the pipette. The two share the same medium but not the same flow.
Seed
Pipette the cell suspension into the culture zone. Cells settle into the U-bottom microwells by gravity.
Aggregate
Within 24–48 h, cells self-assemble into one compact aggregate per microwell. No coating or scaffold needed.
Exchange medium
Place the tip in the PortPocket and aspirate or dispense there. The partition keeps flow off the microwells.
Treat and image
Add compounds through the same pocket. Image the slide directly under brightfield or fluorescence.
Harvest or fix
Collect spheroids from the open wells for downstream assays, or fix and stain them in place.
Built around the slide you already use.
PortPocket keeps the 75 × 25 mm footprint of a glass microscope slide, so it drops into standard stage holders and slide racks. The body is moulded in one piece from optically clear liquid silicone rubber. A clear lid with guide pins lets slides stack without shifting.
Clear silicone body
High-transparency liquid silicone rubber (LSR), 70 Shore A, low volatile content grade. Suitable for brightfield and common fluorescence channels.
18 conditions per slide
Wells are fully independent. Run a 6-point dose response in triplicate, or three cell lines side by side, on one slide.
Ready to use
Gamma-irradiated and individually packed. Open, seed and culture. No coating, washing or pre-conditioning.
The same spheroids, before and after a medium exchange.
We imaged a well on day 1, then again 24 h after a full medium wash through the PortPocket. The microwells stayed occupied and the aggregates kept their position and shape.
Brightfield microscopy, scale bars 200 µm. Seeding 1 × 105 cells per well. Internal data, 2026.
How it compares
| Format | Typical suppliers | Well-to-well CV | Spheroid recovery | Loss during feeding | Main limitation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standard 3D plates (ULA, U-bottom) | Corning, SPL, Greiner | 20–30%1 | 50–60%3 | 40–50%6 | Flow disturbs cultures at every exchange |
| Hydrogel-based kits | Corning, R&D Systems | 20–30%1 | 50–65%4 | 20–30%4 | Losses during gel digestion and recovery |
| Organ-on-chip systems | Emulate, MEPSGEN | 15–25%2 | 60–70%5 | 15–25%7 | Cost, dedicated hardware, training |
| PortPocket 3D Culture Slide | Nano Miracle | 10–15% | 70–85% | 5–10% | Early field validation under way |
PortPocket values: internal data. Reference ranges: (1) Zhu et al., Sci. Rep. 15, 9142 (2025). (2) Piergiovanni et al., Lab Chip 21, 2857 (2021). (3) Caliari & Burdick, Nat. Methods 13, 405 (2016). (4) Kozlowski et al., Commun. Biol. 4, 1387 (2021). (5) Velázquez-García et al., Sci. Rep. 9, 6199 (2019). (6) Wardwell-Swanson et al., 3D Cell Culture White Paper, InSphero (2021). (7) Li et al., Protein Cell 16, pwaf058 (2025).
From ocular cell models to drug screens.
Ophthalmic disease models
Co-culture spheroids from ocular cell samples for diabetic retinopathy and other retinal disease research.
Toxicity and drug screening
18 wells per slide for dose-response series, with in-place imaging at every time point.
Patient-derived models
Workflows developed with clinical partners for patient-derived ocular, synovial and tumour cells.
New approach methodologies
Reproducible human-cell 3D data to support non-animal preclinical packages.
Images in, numbers out.
PortPocket Analyzer is our AI image-analysis pipeline for 3D cultures grown on the slide. It turns the brightfield and fluorescence images you already collect into consistent, reviewer-independent read-outs.
Available now as an analysis service. Software access for partner laboratories from 2027.
| Module | What it does | Internal benchmark |
|---|---|---|
| Growth monitor | Transformer-based anomaly detection on day 1–7 brightfield time series. Flags wells whose size, shape or density departs from normal growth. | AUC 0.87 |
| Viability predictor | U-Net model that estimates viability from Live/Dead and Calcein-AM fluorescence images, calibrated against MTT. | R² 0.85 MAE 5–8% |
Benchmarks from internal validation on prototype datasets. Independent validation planned for 2027.
Technical data
| Product | PortPocket 3D Culture Slide |
| Format | 75 × 25 mm, microscope slide footprint |
| Height | 10.5 mm body |
| Wells | 18 independent wells, 3 × 6 layout (A1–C6) |
| Microwells | About 30 U-bottom microwells per well in a hexagonal array; about 540 per slide |
| Medium exchange | Integrated PortPocket in every well, separated from the culture zone by an internal partition |
| Material | Optically clear liquid silicone rubber (LSR), 70 Shore A |
| Surface | Coating-free; no ECM or anti-adhesion pre-treatment required |
| Lid | Clear lid with stacking guides |
| Weight | About 5 g |
| Sterility | Gamma-irradiated, individually packed |
| Imaging | Brightfield, phase contrast and fluorescence on inverted or upright microscopes with a slide holder |
| Intended use | For research use only. Not for use in diagnostic procedures. |
Ordering information
| Cat. No. | Description | Pack size |
|---|---|---|
| NM-PP18-01 | PortPocket 3D Culture Slide, 18 wells, with lid, sterile | 1 slide |
| NM-PP18-05 | PortPocket 3D Culture Slide, 18 wells, with lid, sterile | 5 slides |
| NM-PP18-20 | PortPocket 3D Culture Slide, 18 wells, with lid, sterile | 20 slides |
| NM-PPA-S | PortPocket Analyzer image-analysis service, per study | Quote |
Quality and testing
Biocompatibility testing is in progress with KTR (Korea Testing & Research Institute): ISO 10993-5 cytotoxicity, elution, residual volatiles and sterility. An ISO 13485-based quality management system is being established ahead of diagnostic-grade versions.
Intellectual property
PortPocket structure: Korean patent application 10-2026-0112592 (pending). Related applications cover AI-based spheroid detection and drug-response prediction (10-2025-0207881) and multi-disease spheroid kits (10-2025-0207911). PCT filing in preparation.
We build tools that make cell-based data easier to trust.
Nano Miracle is a Korean deep-tech company working where optical sensing, image analysis and biology meet. Our team develops AI models and data pipelines that read biological signals consistently, from optical sensor data to microscopy images of 3D cultures.
PortPocket was co-developed with our partner AiderBio, whose 3D culture and organoid team designed the partitioned well. Together we pair the hardware with our analysis software and support researchers outside Korea, from first samples to routine use.
Hardware
PortPocket 3D Culture Slide, available now. A 96-well SBS-format version is in development.
Software
PortPocket Analyzer for growth monitoring and viability prediction.
Research network
Development with Korean clinical partners in ophthalmology and university hospitals.
Try PortPocket in your lab.
We send evaluation samples to qualified research groups and work with distributors and OEM partners worldwide. Tell us about your cells and your assay, and we will suggest a starting protocol.
Nano Miracle Inc.
Headquarters Room 201-54, 2F, 152-14 Baesan-ro, Iksan-si, Jeonbuk State, Republic of Korea
R&D Center Room 302, 17-14 Dongma-ro 3-gil, Songpa-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea