Development of a microtube capper for assisting clinical laboratory and biological experiment workers

Abstract

The opening and closing operations of microtube's cap in clinical laboratory and biological experiment have the potential risks of contamination due to scattering and contact of specimens, and not only the accuracy of inspections and experiments, but also the safety of workers and experimenters. We have already developed a microtube capper for automated robot system of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests. There are needs for such microtube cappers not only in automation systems, but also in manual operations in biological safety cabinets. In this study, we propose a manually operated compact microtube capper under condition of opening and closing the cap without touching the microtube after microtube setting to the microtube capper. Demonstrations showed that experimenters or operators can safely and smoothly perform pipetting operations by tactile switch operations without touching the microtube while looking directly at the sample in the microtube.