Cell culture incubators with integrated cell manipulation systems
AssigneeThrive Bioscience, Inc.
InventorAlan Blanchard
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A cell culture incubator with an incubator cabinet has an internal chamber with a door opening from an external environment. An imager and a manipulator with a scraper are in the internal chamber. A controller is configured for controlling the manipulator to modulate the contact pressure between a scraping edge of the cell scraper and a surface of a cell culture vessel and a sensor is connected to the cell scraper that provides signal to the controller informative of a sensed pressure between a scraping edge of the cell scraper and the surface of a cell culture vessel. The controller controls the manipulator to increase or decrease the pressure between a scraping edge of the cell scraper and the surface of a cell culture vessel.
Claims26
A cell culture incubator comprising:
- an incubator cabinet comprising an internal chamber for incubation of cells in one or more cell culture vessels;
- a door opening from an external environment to said internal chamber;
- an imager configured for imaging said cells within said internal chamber;
- a manipulator for manipulating said cells in said one or more cell culture vessels within said internal chamber, wherein the manipulator comprises one or more cell scrapers, wherein each cell scraper comprises a handle portion comprising an elongate member extending from a proximal region that is attachable or connectable to a manipulator base and a distal region that comprises a scraping edge, a channel extending from the proximal region to the distal region, and an opening at the scraping edge in communication with the channel for transporting at least one of cells or cell culture media with respect to the cell culture vessel;
- a controller configured for controlling the manipulator to modulate the contact pressure between a scraping edge of the cell scraper and a surface of a cell culture vessel;
- a sensor connected to the cell scraper that provides signal to the controller informative of a sensed pressure between a scraping edge of the cell scraper and the surface of a cell culture vessel, wherein the controller is configured to transmit a control signal to the manipulator to increase or decrease the pressure between a scraping edge of the cell scraper and the surface of a cell culture vessel in response to the sensed pressure;
- and,
- a cell culture vessel transfer device for moving said one or more cell culture vessels between locations within said internal chamber.
A cell culture incubator comprising:
- an incubator cabinet comprising an internal chamber for incubation of cells in one or more cell culture vessels;
- a door opening to said internal chamber;
- an imager configured for imaging said cells within said internal chamber;
- a manipulator for manipulating said cells in said one or more cell culture vessels at a first imaging location, and/or a second imaging location, wherein the manipulator comprises one or more cell scrapers, wherein each cell scraper comprises a handle portion comprising an elongate member extending from a proximal region that is attachable or connectable to a manipulator base and a distal region that comprises a scraping edge, a channel extending from the proximal region to the distal region, and an opening at the scraping edge in communication with the channel for transporting at least one of cells or cell culture media with respect to the cell culture vessel;
- a controller configured for controlling the manipulator to modulate the contact pressure between a scraping edge of the cell scraper and a surface of a cell culture vessel;
- a sensor connected to the cell scraper that provides signal to the controller informative of a sensed pressure between a scraping edge of the cell scraper and the surface of a cell culture vessel, wherein the controller is configured to transmit a control signal to the manipulator to increase or decrease the pressure between a scraping edge of the cell scraper and the surface of a cell culture vessel in response to the sensed pressure;
- and
- a cell culture vessel transfer device for moving said one or more cell culture vessels from said first imaging location to said second imaging location or from said second imaging location to said first imaging location.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.