Lock Out Contamination in the Cell Culture Laboratory

Learn more about contamination control

Protect your samples. Culture with confidence

Contamination of cell cultures is easily the most common problem in cell culture laboratories. It can compromise your experiment results, thus wasting time and valuable samples and conducting experiments that ultimately aren’t accurate. While it is impossible to eliminate contamination entirely, it is possible to reduce its frequency and seriousness. Gain a thorough understanding of their sources, follow good aseptic techniques, and choose the right equipment to prevent contamination - biological safety cabinets, CO2 incubators, microbiological incubators, sterile plasticware including filters and barrier pipette tips.

Major types of contamination

Cell culture contaminants can be divided into two main categories, chemical contaminants such as impurities in media, sera, water, endotoxins, and detergents, and biological contaminants such as bacteria, moulds, yeasts, viruses, mycoplasma, as well as cross contamination by other cell lines.

Aseptic techniques

Successful cell culture depends heavily on keeping the cells free from contamination by microorganisms such as bacteria, fungi, and viruses. Nonsterile supplies, media and reagents, airborne particles laden with microorganisms, unclean incubators, and dirty work surfaces are all sources of biological contamination.

 

Aseptic techniques, designed to provide a barrier between the microorganisms in the environment and the sterile cell culture, depends upon a set of procedures to reduce the probability of contamination from these sources. The elements of aseptic technique are a sterile work area, good personal hygiene, sterile reagents and media, and sterile handling.

Choose the right equipment and consumables

Biological safety cabinets

Thermo Scientific biological safety cabinets are designed to be more than just safe; we deliver unparalleled confidence in protecting people, samples and the environment.

Our innovative SmartClean design allows easy access to hard-to-reach upper areas of the chamber and the window itself. At the same time, the patented crossbeam, self-adjusting UV lighting system automatically disinfects the entire cabinet interior when not in use.

CO2 incubators with Cell Locker system

Our extensive portfolio of CO2 incubators delivers proven reliability, outstanding contamination control, and innovative features to achieve optimal growing conditions and experimental reproducibility for your most demanding cell cultures and lab requirements.

The HEPA filtration and automated sterilisation cycles reduce maintenance and cleaning workload, while the Cell Locker system provides enhanced cell protection.

Microbiological incubators

Our portfolio of microbiological incubators is designed with sample protection as the top priority and to maintain temperature consistency for microbiological incubation, storage and testing.

The stainless steel interior is corrosion-resistant and easy to clean. Our Advanced Protocol incubators are the first microbiological incubators with a 140°C decontamination routine, providing the ultimate sample protection.

Rapid-Flow filter units/bottle tops

Thermo Scientific Nalgene Rapid-Flow sterile disposable filter units and bottle tops are the best choice for the filtration of cell culture media, serum, additives and buffers. Non-pyrogenic and endotoxin-free, Rapid-Flow filter units meet the most rigorous testing standards for vacuum filtration.

ART barrier pipette tips

Thermo Scientific ART barrier pipette tips seal completely when exposed to potential contaminants, trapping them inside the barrier. This protects the pipette and subsequent samples from cross contamination. Extended length, Thermo Scientific REACH tips provide an extra level of contamination control.

Surface decontaminants

In diagnostic and research labs Thermo Scientific DNA AWAY and RNase AWAY surface decontaminants effectively eliminate exogenous DNA or RNA molecules without damaging laboratory equipment, reagents, and consumables to minimise the risk of erroneous results.

Information hub

Video: Compare the barrier in the ART barrier pipette tip
Video: Meet the Thermo Scientific Cell Locker system

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