Description:
| Courtesy of Stocks, Peirce-Cottler,
Katz |
Executive Summary
This invention is the inverted
complement of a 96-well plate made to increase cell transfer efficiency and
decrease the time needed for high-quantity cell culture. Using this unique tool,
cells are suspended and grown in an inverted position before being transferred
to a standard 96-well plate for storage.
Background
Standard culture and transfer of
mammalian cells require repetitive pipetting of hanging drop cultures inside a
petri dish by a technician. This method, however, is considered inefficient, is
low-yield and carries a high risk of cross-contamination; in addition, many
cells are often lost in the process of transferring to storage. These problems
plague current research and clinical cell culture and transfer
procedures.
Invention Description
This technology
makes possible the large-scale culture and transfer of human cells for the
clinical treatment of chronic wounds. An inversion of a 96-well culture plate,
the invention provides a unique and effective home for cells that need to be
hydrated during the incubation period and then transferred to growth media,
where they will be stored in a high-throughput and efficient manner. This
high-throughput cell fabrication device significantly reduces time for cell
culture and transfer, ultimately streamlining chronic wound treatment or
research. The device can be inexpensively manufactured via polystyrene injection
molding with disposability in mind, to avoid sterilization costs and possible
patient cross contamination.
Advantages
The
invention:
- Effectively cultures large quantities of cells
- Increases the percentage of cells successfully transferred to storage
plate
- Significantly decreases the transfer time of cells to storage plate
- Normalizes the ratio of transferred cells per storage plate well
- Decreases manufacturing and sterilization costs
Applications
This high-throughput cell culture and
transfer method and device can replace current methods of cell preparation used
for clinical therapy of chronic wounds and for other research endeavors that
require cell culture.
