I'm culturing lymphocytes (i.e. cells in suspension, 6-14um in diameter) for a period of 2-3 weeks in the same 6-well plates (volume of 2-4mL per well). Throughout the culture period I add target cells which die, decompose partly and sink to the bottom of the well. By the end of my culture period I am left with lots of debris in my wells, resulting in a high background noise when I perform my assays. I am therefore looking for a device that would allow me to somehow filter my culture media to separate cells from debris with minimal cell loss (I would rather end up keeping a little bit of debris than losing cells). Please let me know if you can think of any device that could help in this.
Hello Golda Gross
You can separate cell debris by gravity. Just pipette your culture in a centrifuge tube and wait for a few minutes for the cells to settle. Then discard the supernatant which will contain the cell debris. You may lose some number of cells but that should be negligible. You may also try keeping the centrifuge tube in an incline position. Try both ways and select the best.
Regards.
If your culture is lymphocytes (PBMCs), to remove debris you should centrifuge your culture at 250-300g for 5-10 minutes, before proceeding to further assay.
Most of your debris will be left in supernatant while live cells will settle down.
I hope you will be able to remove debris without any device.
All the best.
I'm not sure if this is helpful for you but there is a company called Akadeum that uses a microbubble technology for cell separation. I believe it is similar in nature to density gradient separation. Maybe check out their website. https://www.akadeum.com/technology/
(I am in no way affiliated with Akadeum)
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