細胞処理作業の培地交換プロセスにおける培養補助ロボットの効果検証

抄録

Currently, in the field of regenerative medicine, cell processing is being manually performed. Such a process is labor intensive and expensive, and its efficiency needs to be enhanced. Recently, automatic cell culture apparatus equipped with a vertical articulated robot have been proposed. However, automation of all cell processing tasks complicates the system. This study develops a simple and rational cell processing system by combining the tasks performed by a robot and human. In a previous study, we improved the efficiency of discarding and injecting tasks using a robot arm in the media changing process. In this study, we report the results of the validation of the cell culture assisting robot that facilitates the improvement of the efficiency of discarding and injecting tasks. Our experimental results revealed the feasibility of a cell culture assisting robot that can be used in a safety cabinet. By installing the apparatus, discarding and injecting processes can be performed in parallel, which takes less than half the time compared with the manual process. The total time of the discarding and injecting processes for 40 flasks was 17 min 26 s. In addition, the risk of dripping can be reduced using this apparatus.