I was wondering if anybody here proliferates mammalian cells using a system with an integrated automated incubator. My team was thinking about trying to culture cells in single well SBS microplates (like this) on our tecan, but I feel like slightly higher wall heights would help with adding more media, hence offsetting the amount of evaporation one would get using a single well plate with a not-so-tightly fitting lid.
Does anybody have experience with doing this, or does anyone have any single well microplate recommendations we could try out?
Are you wondering what labware/ plates to use? The Allen Institute has an automated mammalian cell system for stem cells, maybe this could help. I don’t think they use single plates though.
I have manage to get cell workflows working well on Tecan EVOs and Fluents, but you really have to look at working with specific labware. For example, 6 and 24 well lidded cell culture plates for HEK and CHO cell-lines. We then combine and transfer into 50 ml tubes to maintain the media volume to scale to flask. Single well labware can work but maintenance sterile can be more challenging plus you limit volume if you need to shake when incubating.
T-Cell and some mammalian lines can also work really well in 6 and 24 well G-Rex plates as are well agitated so they do not need shaking. Media changes and cell viability sampling is super easy with these plates but the plates are very expensive.
I have setup single well culture with T-flasks but you need a lot of extra devices to tilt and can be restricted to fixed tips which can be challenging to keep clean and sterile without and ethanol washes or air stream. Had similar issue with omnitrays. So I am not a big fan of single well. So have always opted to have replicated in 6 or 24 well plates and then combine replicates as this also has the advantage to normalise out viability and variable cell growth due to transfection or reviving frozen cell-lines.
