Controlled Physiologically Relevant Conditions in a Portable Hypoxic Cell Culture Incubator

We have developed a portable cell incubator that maintain and control the cultured cells in physiologically more relevant conditions compared to normal culture inside the incubator. The battery powered device control the temperature and supply premixed oxygen contained gas from small refillable bottles to the culture chambers maintaining the supplied oxygen levels. This will mimics better the human cells as in in vivo condition. Furthermore, single platform can hold six individual cell culture chambers. Chambers are tightly sealed to avoid evaporation and thus reduce the concentration of the culture liquid, which is typical in incubators in busy laboratories. The device can be transported to another lab or another campus for further studies while maintaining the desired conditions. The main advantage is to enable live imaging for example on confocal microscope or on any microscope for extended time for time laps imaging. Another interesting application area is the radiation studies. WE have demonstrated that by maintaining the low oxygen during the radiation it minimize the destructive effect of additional oxygen for DNA double stand breaks [1]. Therefore, the device enhance the quality of cancer treatment studies providing more stable, controlled and physiologically relevant culture conditions for the cells during the experiments.