by Robert L. Stevenson
AL
Highlights From SLAS2016
Despite a blizzard in the Eastern United States, 6293 scientists—an increase of about 25% from the conference’s previous high—were able to travel to sunny San Diego to discuss laboratory automation and screening at SLAS2016, held January 24–27. The intensity of interest in automation and biological assays, reflected in both attendance and the content of 140 lectures and 400 posters, validates the symbiotic combination that drove the merger of the Society for Laboratory Automation and the Society for Biological Screening in 2010.
Cell biology The keynote lecture by Dr. Michael Gottesman of the Laboratory of Cell
Biology, National Cancer Institute (Bethesda, Md.) set the stage for the meeting. Focusing on drug resistance in cancer, he discussed the experi- mental difficulty in dealing with cell growth in a dynamic solid tumor, and as an example cited oxygen tension. When a cell becomes cancerous it can rob nutrients, such as oxygen, from neighboring cells. As they grow, high- metabolism cancer cells proliferate and interior cells suffer from oxygen starvation since the exterior cells use it first. Waste products build up in the interior and may poison the central cells, unless these cells develop countermeasures, such as alternate energy pathways.
Such variations in cell environment, as well as variations caused by meta- bolic processes, may explain why angiogenesis as a cancer treatment has not worked as well as initially hoped. Gottesman noted that typical in vitro cell biology experiments involve 21% oxygen concentration. Yet, in vivo, oxygen tension varies significantly. This is one example of why there is difficulty translating in vitro results to in vivo systems.
Dr. Robin Felder of the University of Virginia (Charlottesville) provided a list of needs for cell therapy: large-scale expansion of cells; ability to obtain data that is relevant and useful in triage and therapy of humans; and culturing cells in 3-D, which appears to be much more useful than 2-D for providing clinically relevant data. Professor Felder also saw the need for fully automated cell culture systems that include programmed temperature and oxygen tension to control cell growth. From Dr. Felder’s remarks, it appears that laboratory-scale cell biology needs to improve be- fore cell therapy meets the efficacy and safety expectations of the public.
Cell preservation I came away from the conference impressed with the improvements
in protocols and apparatus for cell biology, which I see as being partly driven by impending advances in cell therapeutics and by advances in
AMERICAN LABORATORY 16 Figure 1 – CryoPod carrier from Brooks Automation. APRIL 2016
bio-banking and supply-chain management. For example, in the Brooks Automation (Chelmsford, Mass.) booth, a major part of the backdrop focused on controlling temperature in the steps from bio-banked speci- men cell therapeutic delivery to a patient. Successful freezing and thawing of cells minimizes formation of ice crystals, which can damage cell struc- ture, reducing viability. For example, GLP is to thaw samples by bringing them to a temperature of 37 °C in 60–90 seconds. Common practice has been to float the vial in an ice bath, which thaws the cell sample slowly. But slow thawing gives water time to enter the cold, dehydrated cells and form ice crystals. The crystals damage cell membranes and organelles, resulting in cell death.
The Brooks CryoPod carrier (Figure 1) allows sample or product transport at <–150 °C. For use in transporting frozen cells to the lab bench or bed- side, it holds samples below the Tg (glass transition temperature) of water (–135 °C) for 20 days. Brooks also cooperates with BioCision (San Rafael, Calif.), a company that provides a programmable melting module that heats sample tubes to 37 °C in 60–90 seconds without overshoot. All of this minimizes the variable of thermal stress imposed upon samples during bio-banking.
Most biological samples are preserved by freezing. One can avoid re- peated freeze thaw cycles by aliquotting a master prep into small vials at volumes suitable for the intended assays. But this increases the storage volume in the freezer. Glenn Smith of CryoXtract Instruments (Woburn,
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