Development of a Novel Automated Cell Isolation, Expansion, and Characterization Platform

Abstract

Implementation of regenerative medicine in the clinical setting requires not only biological inventions, but also the development of reproducible and safe method for cell isolation and expansion. As the currently used manual techniques do not fulfill these requirements, there is a clear need to develop an adequate robotic platform for automated, large-scale production of cells or cell-based products. Here, we demonstrate an automated liquid-handling cell-culture platform that can be used to isolate, expand, and characterize human primary cells (e.g., from intervertebral disc tissue) with results that are comparable to the manual procedure. Specifically, no differences could be observed for cell yield, viability, aggregation rate, growth rate, and phenotype. Importantly, all steps-from the enzymatic isolation of cells through the biopsy to the final quality control-can be performed completely by the automated system because of novel tools that were incorporated into the platform. This automated cell-culture platform can therefore replace entirely manual processes in areas that require high throughput while maintaining stability and safety, such as clinical or industrial settings.

Enhancing human nucleus pulposus cells for biological treatment approaches of degenerative intervertebral disc diseases: a systematic review

“…For clinical settings, automated, reproducible and safe methods of cell isolation and expansion will be mandatory. A first step in this direction is an automated liquid handling cell‐culture platform reported on recently, which was used to isolate, expand and characterize human IVD cells in monolayer culture (Franscini et al ., ). All steps, from the enzymatic isolation of cells to the final quality control, while monitoring and controlling multiple parameters, were performed completely by the automated system with satisfactory results.…”

Effects of IL-1β, IL-20, and BMP-2 on Intervertebral Disc Inflammation under Hypoxia

“…IVD cells were isolated from 10 patients with HIVD at the levels of L4-5 and L5-S1. The primary culture of IVD cells from herniated disc was mentioned as previously described [26,27]. The disc tissues were digested with 0.2% collagenase type II (Worthington, Lakewood, CO, USA) in Dulbecco's modified eagle medium/nutrient mixture F-12 (DMEM/F12) medium (Gibco, Grand Island, NY, USA) for 6 h. The isolated cells were cultured in DMEM/F12 medium supplemented with 10% fetal bovine serum (FBS), 100 U/mL penicillin, 100 µg/mL streptomycin, and 2 mM L-glutamine (Gibco, Grand Island, NY, USA).…”

Towards standardized automated immunomonitoring: an automated ELISpot assay for safe and parallelized functionality analysis of immune cells

“…Advantages of this automated assay are standardization, improved safety, reproducibility, quality control, and scalability as has previously been suggested by others (Franscini et al 2011). In automated routines plates can be processed without human assistance.…”