I am working with human colonic smooth muscle cells. We don´t have our own imaging system. So I need to transfer cell often from our lab to another lab (nearly 1 km distance). I am using styrofoam box sterilized with 70% ethanol.
Do you think the way I am working is good enough for primary human cells?
We are transporting cells regularly for 700 km (7 hours drive). What we consider to be important is: temperature control and CO2 control. For that we bought a mini-incubator (size of about a household microwave) equipped with controllable CO2 supply (e.g. bottle from a sparkling water preparatory machine). The second problem is the driving capabilities and street configuration. For same cells we coat the culture vessels with polylysine to avoid cell detachment. Before seeding the cells for new experiments we allow for 24 hour recovery in the host laboratory. That works fine.
I had to do this, however to image adherent cancer cells. Since contamination in your system is significantly more costly, I highly suggest packaging that can be autoclaved (plastic box, please check which kind of PVC can be autoclaved) open it under the hood, and add your dish inside. This will at least assure safety while going to the other lab. Perfect setup would be to open the box in a hood in the other lab :)
Best of luck!
Hi Muhammad,
That should be absolutely fine. As long as you are using filter capped culture flasks the risk of contamination is negligible. I would worry more about temperature differences than anything else, depending on where you are!
Alem.
Hi Muhammad,
beside the risk of contamination i also would consider the stress of transportation. While transport, of course the cells will be sujected to lower temperature and changing pH value in the media. The temerature-situation you can improove by packing to 37°C prewarmed chilling packs, the pH stability you can improve by adding HEPES to your media, at least the day before you want to image your cells. But anyway, if there is the posibility, i would prefer to transport the cells to the other lab at least the day before imaging, so they can recover from the journey (even if it is a short way), and adopt to the incubator of the other lab. But of course, this is dependent on what you are investigating... But for example for certain morphological changes i would do so.
Good luck!
why not?
just take care of contamination.........and sub cultured as early as possible
Hi its k man i also had experience like this its k you can transfer your cell in the box from one place to another to some extent you can keep your cell out of incubator but prolonged keeping of them may cause some negative impact on the cells
Hey,
you should also consider mechanical stress due to swashing medium if you are not VERY careful during the transport. To prevent this, you could completely fill a culture flask with medium preincubated in the appropiate CO2 concentration (just place it in a incubator in a open but covered flask) and close the flask tightly with a non-filter cap. This is our standard procedure for shipping of living cells, and it works fine for cells cultivated in non-CO2-buffered medium (2-3 days). pH shift in your case should not be a problem since the flask will not be exposed to an air phase allowing the CO2 to gas out and won't be away from CO2 for a long time. The shift by metabolic processes of the cells will be buffered by the large medium volume.
We are transporting cells regularly for 700 km (7 hours drive). What we consider to be important is: temperature control and CO2 control. For that we bought a mini-incubator (size of about a household microwave) equipped with controllable CO2 supply (e.g. bottle from a sparkling water preparatory machine). The second problem is the driving capabilities and street configuration. For same cells we coat the culture vessels with polylysine to avoid cell detachment. Before seeding the cells for new experiments we allow for 24 hour recovery in the host laboratory. That works fine.
Have a look at our Cellbox from Cellbox Solutions GmbH.
It's a portable battery powered CO2 Incubator. And should be affordable for every laboratory.
Please contact me if you need any help in the field of live cell transportation.
P.S. We also have international flight permission on our flight box.
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