[en] The Mary Rose is a 16th century English warship that was sunk in 1545 in Portsmouth harbour, raised in 1982 and is currently being conserved prior to public display in a new custom-built museum. Like many water-logged ships the Mary Rose timbers are subject to the 'sulfur problem', namely the degradation of the wood by sulfuric acid. We are currently exploring the use of nanocrystalline strontium carbonate impregnation to neutralise the acid and to act as an alkaline reservoir to prevent further attack. Here we present some of the preliminary results in the characterisation of the materials and the effect of the treatment.

[en] Highlights: • FN, CPPT, and VN are effective coating reagents for MSCs in the Quantum bioreactor. • MSCs cultured using FN, CPPT, and VN as coating reagents meet ISCT standards. • No differences were seen among FN, CPPT, or VN as coatings for the Quantum system. -- Abstract: The addition of a coating reagent to promote cell adherence is necessary to prepare the membrane surface of the Quantum® Cell Expansion System hollow-fiber bioreactor for the culture of mesenchymal stem cells. In this study, the efficacy of 8 potential coating reagents has been compared in terms of the doubling times of their cell populations, cell morphology, characterization via flow cytometry, and capacity for trilineage differentiation. Human fibronectin (FN), pooled human cryoprecipitate (CPPT), and recombinant human vitronectin (VN) were successful as coating reagents, and each product has advantages in different cell culture contexts. Mesenchymal stem cells harvested from Quantum cultured with each of these 3 compounds as coating reagents all met International Society for Cellular Therapy standards for plastic adherence, surface marker expression, and successful trilineage differentiation. No significant differences were observed among the doubling times from Quantum harvests using FN, CPPT, or VN as coating reagents (P = 0.31). Coating with gelatin, human serum albumin, collagen I, poly‑l‑lysine, and poly‑d‑lysine resulted in significantly lower harvest yield; these agents are not recommended for use as coating reagents in the Quantum system.