Automating media exchange in cell culture workflows

Free scientists from manual tasks

At the core of all tissue culture operations are the processes involved in keeping cells healthy. Feeding and nurturing cells is a daily, repetitive chore for scientists working with any kind of mammalian cell line.  

Unfortunately, biology simply doesn’t adhere to our working days. That means constant maintenance of cells outside of normal working hours – and especially over weekends. Often, long-term experiments are designed around avoiding scientists having to work antisocial hours – compromising the effectiveness of the experiments – or lab workers are forced to work out of hours. 

This is why applying open, integrated automation to some of these standard operations is critical to unlocking the full potential of labs and freeing up scientists from low-value tasks like media exchange and passaging.

Our solution: Open, integrated automation

Increase operational lab time 500%

Applying open, integrated automation to the processes of tending to cells in most longer-term cell culture experiments could increase lab utilization and experimental time 5x or greater.

A system like this also requires some specialized tooling to complete the system:

Tilting: Replicating motions that scientists carry out naturally to remove media from larger vessels or treat cells with dissociation reagents requires mechanical operations. Our universal tilting position can be applied to liquid handling platforms to enable full media transfer and cell recovery from any kind of SBS labware.

Media: A large amount of media can be required even for small numbers of plates/flasks. Automata provides a media handling unit that keeps the media chilled until required.  It is then warmed on delivery to the platform just in time for use in a process.

Containment: Automata has partnered with clean air specialists to develop modular containment solutions from HEPA product protection to full class 2 biosafety. Openness is central to the design of the LINQ platform, so any solution will allow walk-up access to devices.

Get in touch and find out how we can help your lab automate

Is Automata right for my cell culture lab?

Here are a few answers to some frequently asked questions