The present disclosure provides a cell culture automation system that provides enclosed culture conditions that may reduce the risk of contamination and automatically culture cells in large scale. Particularly, the cell culture system comprises (i) one or more removable microfluidic microwells and (ii) a culture device holding the microfluidic microwells, wherein each microfluidic microwell has one or multiple hollow units compartmentalized, and containing microfluidic channels with no bottoms throughout the microfluidic microwell, wherein the microfluidic channels contain one or more cell inlets.

A microwell perfusion plate system includes a plate and at least one well on the plate. Each well includes: a porous membrane; a through-pore microwell membrane above and on the porous membrane, the microwell membrane including a plurality of microwells with a respective microwell configured to hold a 3D cell culture, wherein a respective microwell includes a top opening and a bottom opening; an inlet passageway in fluid communication with each top opening of the plurality of microwells and configured to deliver liquid medium to the plurality of microwells and the 3D cell cultures held therein; an outlet passageway in fluid communication with each bottom opening of the plurality of microwells and configured to receive the liquid medium from the plurality of microwells; and a cell culture well directly above the microwell membrane, wherein the cell culture well defines at least a portion of the inlet passageway.

A microfabricated device having at least one gas-entrapping feature formed therein in a configuration that entraps air bubbles upon wetting the feature with a solvent or solution is described. The device includes a sacrificial residue in contact with the gas-entrapping feature, the dissolution of which guides the wetting of the gas-entrapping feature.

A cell culture insert with a hollow cylindrical housing having an upper end-face opening delimited by an opening edge and a lower end-face base designed as a membrane, support feet being arranged on the base edge of the housing and/or on the base and at least one support arm. The legs protrude downward for supporting the housing on a support in a non-tipping manner with a small uniform spacing between the base and the support. The at least one support arm protrudes outwards at the opening edge and can be placed on an edge of a well plate in which a plurality of wells. The support arm is an edge hanging element, and for this purpose, has a support section that runs radially relative to the housing and a hanging section that runs from the support section downwards in the direction of the base of the housing.

A method of controlling a needle actuator to interact with a cell is provided, the method comprising: providing an actuator comprising a tower, a stage and a needle, wherein the needle is mounted on the stage; applying an electrostatic potential between the tower and the stage to retract the needle; moving the actuator towards the cell; reducing the potential so as to allow the stage and needle to move towards the cell; applying calibration data to detect when the needle has pierced the cell; and reducing the potential further once it has been detected that the needle has pierced the cell. The cell can be a biological cell. The needle can be a micro-needle and the stage can be a micro-stage.

Disclosed are a spheroid array and more particularly, a droplet trapping structure array capable of isolating all or selected spheroids into an isolated droplet array environment and the use thereof. The droplet-trapping structure array and the method and device for transferring spheroids using the same have the advantages of transferring droplets or spheroids with very high efficiency and very small variation between users by simply contacting two arrays. The spheroid transfer method and device enable mass-production of spheroid arrays in an isolated environment. In particular, the droplet trapping structure array and the spheroid transfer method can be useful for the treatment of spheroids with various reagents and the exchange of culture media.

In a method for cultivating biological cells of differing types, carriers are stored in an incubator, in which the carriers comprise one or more storage chambers. One or more cultures comprising cells of a common type are stored in one of the storage chambers. Cultivation parameters are assigned to the cultures. Datasets containing organizational coordinates of each storage chamber and the cultivation parameters of the culture stored therein are stored in a data processing device. The carriers are removed from the incubator at predefined time intervals in order to treat the cultures according to their respective cultivation parameters. The datasets are divided into groups with correlated cultivation parameters. The cultures are subsequently treated in groups.

A system for processing samples from a body of fluid. The system includes one or more sample bottles for acquiring a sample from the body of fluid. Each sample bottle initially retains a pre-filling fluid. Each sample bottle includes a fluidic inlet port and a bottle outlet port. Each sample bottle has an inlet check valve coupled to the fluidic inlet port, the inlet check valve configured to allow fluid from the body of fluid into a sample bottle via the fluidic inlet port when the pressure difference between the body of fluid and fluid within the sample bottle reaches a threshold. The system further includes at least one pump, the bottle outlet port of each sample bottle selectively coupled to the at least one pump via a different control valve. The at least one pump is configured, in a first configuration, to remove prefilling fluid from each selected sample bottle such that, for each selected sample bottle, the pressure difference threshold is reached and a sample from the body of fluid is acquired.

A system and method for studying cell injury mechanisms by applying biologically relevant mechanical impact to in vitro cell culture are disclosed. This approach is for maintaining consistent in vitro conditions during experiments, accommodating multiple cell populations, and monitoring each in real-time while achieving amplitude and time scale of input acceleration that mimic blunt injury cases. These multiplexed, environmental control capabilities enable characterizing the relationships between mechanical impact and cell injury in multivariate biological systems.

Described are devices for tethering biological materials, which in applicable embodiments support the growth and differentiation thereof. In a specific embodiment, the biological materials are cells and the cells grow/differentiate into tethered three-dimensional aggregates. The devices disclosed herein may be used in various methods/assays relating to tethered biological materials, such as to tethered three-dimensional aggregates of cells.