2019 年 54 巻 6 号 p. 391-398
Replacement of the culture medium is an important part of the cell culture process. Furthermore, sometimes, the culture medium needs to be supplemented with nutrients or drugs for cell culture. Replacement of the culture medium and addition of substances to the culture medium is typically done manually, which can introduce various complications during cell culture. Therefore, we aimed to develop a new unique medium exchange system with ANSI/SBS standard size (width 128mm × depth 85mm × height 40mm) for the perfusion and infusion of cell culture media or other solutions into a culture dish placed on the microscope stage for long-term time-lapse imaging. Using the newly developed system, we successfully maintained HeLa cells seeded on a 35-mm culture dish placed on the system on the microscope stage and infused drugs into the medium during time-lapse imaging. This system eliminated the need for manual handling, thus avoiding the problems associated with it. Moreover, this auto-exchanger could be installed with one touch and was within the ANSI/SBS standard size, which made it possible to use this system along with a microscope. We expect our unique medium exchange system to be used extensively for time-lapse imaging in the future.
