Automated Cell Culture
January 3, 2012 | Terry Sharrer
Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch would be amazed at today’s robotic laboratories, parallel synthesis, high throughput screening, microarrays and other technologies found in the most advanced research centers, but they also would find cell culture much as they practiced it-with pipettes, Petri dishes, and a lot of TLC. But that scene is about to change, as researchers at three Fraunhofer Institutes and a Max Planck Institute in Germany have collaborated to create a “cell factory” where the entire process of growing and evaluating cells in culture has been automated. A key element to this robotic system is a computer that assesses microscopic images during the growth period. MORE