Nikon Announces the BioStation CT – An Integrated Cell Culture Observation Device
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Nikon Instruments Inc., has announced the BioStation CT, a fully integrated, self contained cell culture observation device and monitoring system that can allow users with minimal microscopy experience to conduct live cell imaging locally or by remote operation over a public or private network.
The BioStation CT can provide a system for managing, observing and recording cell growth, morphology, and protein expression in culture by providing consistent environmental control of temperature, humidity and gas concentration. The system can allow numerous researchers to perform multiple experiments with the same instrument within the same period.
Major applications for the Nikon BioStation CT include clinical medicine where researchers can determine the optimum selection of anticancer drug combinations; re-generative medicine for stem cell culturing and cell differentiation; biotechnology based drug development and toxicology studies; drug discovery safety testing; biotechnology research involving genome and proteome initiatives; and traditional bioscience research using multi-channel fluorescence and time lapse image recording.
"Nikon's BioStation CT allows researchers in re-generative or clinical medicine, drug discovery or bioresearch to observe and study cell growth without a steep learning curve or complicated system component integration, either from the laboratory or from the convenience of remote locations," said Stan Schwartz, vice president Nikon Instruments.
"The product combines touch screen operation and sophisticated data logging capability with high level data security protocol."
The design of the BioStation CT has eliminated thermal and mechanical drift, ensuring stable environmental controls and drift-free focusing for outstanding imaging results.
The product supports multi-dimensional setup for X, Y, time, phase contrast imaging and multi-channel fluorescence on multiple vessels or dish observations. An internal motorized stage supports X, Y and Z dimensional movement.
A high performance cooled scientific grade CCD digital imaging camera is incorporated to provide excellent time-lapse multi-channel image sequences, easily databased for immediate review and analysis even during a continuing experiment through advanced internal server control operations.
This optical system is designed to deliver high resolution images with magnifications of 2X, 4X, 10X, 20X, and 40X with phase contrast and up to two fluorescent channels.
Users of the BioStation CT access the product through an interlock port. A robotic culture dish transfer arm slowly moves each vessle frame carrier to maximize cell care.
A fully flexible frame carrier can be inserted for differently shaped culture vessles and the three position loading station enables fast temperature recovery, within less than 30-seconds.
The BioStation CT can hold up to 30 of these individual frame carriers, enabling multiple experiments with full data security utilizing the same instrument for high return on investment value and flexibility.
Dedicated BioStation CT software ensures operation of the product, allowing the user to select live observation, time-lapse settings, or an option to review saved time-lapsed image sequences.
