Six Years' Continuous Production Generating Thousands of High Quality Cell Lines
  

TAP Biosystems, a leading supplier of innovative cell culture systems and consumables for life science applications, has announced that two of its SelecT^TM  automated cell culture systems have been used in the production of  350 different cell lines at the world's largest biological resource centre, ATCC® (American Type Culture Collection). 

Installed in 2006, the SelecT systems at ATCC fully automate cell culture processes to ensure sustainable, consistent production of thousands of ampoules of cell lines.  The systems support the production of around 55,000 ampoules each year and have cultured items such as tumour cell lines, primary fibroblasts, and stem cell feeder layer lines, grown in adherent, aggregate or suspension culture. The cells lines cultured are those in high demand (up to 1500 ampoules per cell line per year) or required to fulfil requests for bulk production of specific cell lines in response to customer demand.

SelecT has been specifically designed to enable multiple cell lines to be cultured in parallel, without risk of cross contamination.  The system has a negative-pressure, HEPA-filtered laminar airflow cabinet to ensure aseptic processing using protocols optimised to individual cell lines.  Cells can be harvested, counted and seeded without operator intervention, overnight and at weekends, enhancing the productivity of cell culture facilities.

Matt Chorley, Senior Director of Operations at the ATCC, commented: "The reason we use SelecT is that the levels of quality it creates are very high, and if we have a sudden custom request for a cell line we can fulfil that order quickly by putting the cells on the systems.  This makes our turnaround time on orders more rapid, and allows us to continue to deliver high quality cells at competitive prices."

Chorley continued: "We also like the support we get from TAP and we have worked in partnership with their staff on a number of technical R&D projects to adapt the systems and protocols to ensure we could culture some of the trickier cell lines."

Dr Dave Thomas, Product Manager at TAP Biosystems, added: "We are delighted that our SelecT systems have been used to culture so many different cell lines at such a prestigious cell culture facility.  ATCC's extensive use of TAP's technology illustrates how automation can meet the rigorous cell culture standards required by a bioresource centre. It also reinforces SelecT's position as one of the premier systems for culturing consistent, high quality, cells for use in wide ranging research programmes. By making these cell lines available to the research community, ATCC are bringing the benefits of automated cell culture to a global audience."

For more information visit www.tapbiosystems.com