Fully Automated Cultivation of Adipose-Derived Stem Cells in the StemCellDiscovery—A Robotic Laboratory for Small-Scale, High-Throughput Cell Production Including Deep Learning-Based Confluence Estimation

Integration of a fully automated flow cytometry system with high robustness into a Screening Station

In recent years, there has been an increasing demand for the detection of rare cells in drug discovery research, such as cells that have differentiated off-purpose or are required for immunogenicity evaluation. Since detection and quantification limits depend on the robustness of the experiment, inter-human differences in technique have a significant impact on the performance of the assay system. Here, we integrated flow cytometry into a cell experiment platform, Screening Station, to construct a robust assay system, examined each step of the flow cytometric pretreatment using Jurkat cells, and finally evaluated the overall assay performance. Cell detection rate when the experiment was performed manually was 48.8% ± 5.7% (CV=11.6%) versus 73.7%±2.0% (CV=2.8%) with the automated method. To further clarify the analytical performance of the automated method, 1-100 PD-1 expressing Jurkat cells were spiked with 1 × 105 Jurkat cells, and the lower limit of detection, linearity, and CV% were evaluated. Average detection rate was 69%, decision count was 0.985, and lower limit of detection was 4 cells (0.004%). We evaluated the CV% value of the number of detected cells per spiked cell and found our system to be highly robust, approximating a binomial distribution with a 69% recovery rate. In conclusion, we have integrated the Novocyte flow cytometry system into an automated experimental platform, Screening Station, to create a fully automated flow cytometric assay system with high robustness. Our platform can fulfill the technology needs of drug discovery for rare cell detection, which have intensified in recent years.

Screening Station, a novel laboratory automation system for physiologically relevant cell-based assays

Due to their physiological relevance, cell-based assays using human-induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived cells are a promising in vitro pharmacological evaluation system for drug candidates. However, cell-based assays involve complex processes such as long-term culture, real-time and continuous observation of living cells, and detection of many cellular events. Automating multi-sample processing through these assays will enhance reproducibility by limiting human error and reduce researchers' valuable time spent conducting these experiments. Furthermore, this integration enables continuous tracking of morphological changes, which is not possible with the use of stand-alone devices. This report describes a new laboratory automation system called the Screening Station, which uses novel automation control and scheduling software called Green Button Go to integrate various devices. To integrate the above-mentioned processes, we established three workflows in Green Button Go: 1) For long-term cell culture, culture plates and medium containers are transported from the automatic CO2 incubator and cool incubator, respectively, and the cell culture medium in the microplates is exchanged daily using the Biomek i7 workstation; 2) For time-lapse live-cell imaging, culture plates are automatically transferred between the CQ1 confocal quantitative image cytometer and the SCALE48W automatic CO2 incubator; 3) For immunofluorescence imaging assays, in addition to the above-mentioned devices, the 405LS microplate washer allows for formalin-fixation and immunostaining of cells. By scheduling various combinations of the three workflows, we successfully automated the culture and medium exchange processes for iPSCs derived from patients with facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy, confirmation of their differentiation status by live-cell imaging, and confirmation of the presence of differentiation markers by immunostaining. In addition, deep learning analysis enabled us to quantify the degree of iPSC differentiation from live-cell imaging data. Further, the results of the fully automated experiments could be accessed via the intranet, enabling experiments and analysis to be conducted remotely once the necessary reagents and labware were prepared. We expect that the ability to perform clinically and physiologically relevant cell-based assays from remote locations using the Screening Station will facilitate global research collaboration and accelerate the discovery of new drug candidates.

Transformative Materials to Create 3D Functional Human Tissue Models In Vitro in a Reproducible Manner

Recreating human tissues and organs in the petri dish to establish models as tools in biomedical sciences has gained momentum. These models can provide insight into mechanisms of human physiology, disease onset, and progression, and improve drug target validation, as well as the development of new medical therapeutics. Transformative materials play an important role in this evolution, as they can be programmed to direct cell behavior and fate by controlling the activity of bioactive molecules and material properties. Using nature as an inspiration, scientists are creating materials that incorporate specific biological processes observed during human organogenesis and tissue regeneration. This article presents the reader with state-of-the-art developments in the field of in vitro tissue engineering and the challenges related to the design, production, and translation of these transformative materials. Advances regarding (stem) cell sources, expansion, and differentiation, and how novel responsive materials, automated and large-scale fabrication processes, culture conditions, in situ monitoring systems, and computer simulations are required to create functional human tissue models that are relevant and efficient for drug discovery, are described. This paper illustrates how these different technologies need to converge to generate in vitro life-like human tissue models that provide a platform to answer health-based scientific questions.

Adaptive phase contrast microscopy to compensate for the meniscus effect

Phase contrast is one of the most important microscopic methods for making visible transparent, unstained cells. Cell cultures are often cultivated in microtiter plates, consisting of several cylindrical wells. The surface tension of the culture medium forms a liquid lens within the well, causing phase contrast conditions to fail in the more curved edge areas, preventing cell observation. Adaptive phase contrast microscopy is a method to strongly increase the observable area by optically compensating for the meniscus effect. The microscope's condenser annulus is replaced by a transmissive LCD to allow dynamic changes. A deformable, liquid-filled prism is placed in the illumination path. The prism's surface angle is adaptively inclined to refract transmitted light so that the tangential angle of the liquid lens can be compensated. Besides the observation of the phase contrast image, a beam splitter allows to simultaneously view condenser annulus and phase ring displacement. Algorithms analyze the displacement to dynamically adjust the LCD and prism to guarantee phase contrast conditions. Experiments show a significant increase in observable area, especially for small well sizes. For 96-well-plates, more than twelve times the area can be examined under phase contrast conditions instead of standard phase contrast microscopy.

Additively Manufactured Robot Gripper Blades for Automated Cell Production Processes

The automation of cell production processes demands strict requirements with regard to sterility, reliability, and flexibility. Robots work in such environments as transporting devices for a huge variety of disposables, e.g., cell plates, tubes, cassettes, and other objects. Therefore, the blades of their grippers must be designed to hold all of these different materials in a stable, gentle manner, and in defined positions, which means that the blades require complex geometries. Furthermore, they should have as few edges as possible, so as to be easy to clean. In this report, we demonstrate how these requirements can be met by producing stainless steel robot grippers by additive manufacturing.

A Framework for Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)-Based IoT Application Development

In the last decades, the increasing complexity of industrial information technology has led to the emergence of new trends in manufacturing. Factories are using multiple Internet of Things (IoT) platforms to harvest sensor information to improve production. Such a transformation contributes to efficiency growth and reduced production costs. To deal with the heterogeneity of the services within an IoT system, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is referred to in the literature as being advantageous for the design and development of software to support IoT-based production processes. The aim of SOA-based design is to provide the leverage to use and reuse loosely coupled IoT services at the middleware layer to minimise system integration problems. We propose a system architecture that follows the SOA architectural pattern and enables developers and business process designers to dynamically add, query or use instances of existing modular software in the IoT context. Furthermore, an analysis of utilization of modular software that presents some challenges and limitations of this approach is also in the scope of this work.

A Novel Fluidic Platform for Semi-Automated Cell Culture into Multiwell-like Bioreactors

In this work, we developed and characterized a novel fluidic platform that enables long-term in vitro cell culture in a semi-automated fashion. The system is constituted by a control unit provided with a piezoelectric pump, miniaturized valves, and a microfluidic network for management and fine control of reagents’ flow, connected to a disposable polymeric culture unit resembling the traditional multiwell-like design. As a proof of principle, Human Umbilical Vein Endothelial Cells (HUVEC) and Human Mesenchymal Stem Cells (hMSC) were seeded and cultured into the cell culture unit. The proliferation rate of HUVEC and the osteogenic differentiation of hMSC were assessed and compared to standard culture in Petri dishes. The results obtained demonstrated that our approach is suitable to perform semi-automated cell culture protocols, minimizing the contribution of human operators and allowing the standardization and reproducibility of the procedures. We believe that the proposed system constitutes a promising solution for the realization of user-friendly automated control systems that will favor the standardization of cell culture processes for cell factories, drug testing, and biomedical research.

Automating Laboratory Processes by Connecting Biotech and Robotic Devices—An Overview of the Current Challenges, Existing Solutions and Ongoing Developments

The constantly growing interest and range of applications of advanced cell, gene and regenerative therapies raise the need for efficient production of biological material and novel treatment technologies. Many of the production and manipulation processes of such materials are still manual and, therefore, need to be transferred to a fully automated execution. Developers of such systems face several challenges, one of which is mechanical and communication interfaces in biotechnological devices. In the present state, many devices are still designed for manual use and rarely provide a connection to external software for receiving commands and sending data. However, a trend towards automation on the device market is clearly visible, and the communication protocol, Open Platform Communications Data Access (OPC DA), seems to become established as a standard in biotech devices. A rising number of vendors offer software for device control and automated processing, some of which even allow the integration of devices from multiple manufacturers. The high, application-specific need in functionalities, flexibility and adaptivity makes it difficult to find the best solution and, in many cases, leads to the creation of new custom-designed software. This report shall give an overview of existing technologies, devices and software for laboratory automation of biotechnological processes. Furthermore, it presents an outlook for possible future developments and standardizations.