CO₂ incubator monitoring
One of the most important devices in producing and researching biopharmaceuticals is the CO2 incubator. Incubators are used for cell culture processes in many applications, including antibody production, tissue engineering, viral vaccine research, reproductive technologies, cell and gene therapies, and toxicity studies.
Modern CO₂ incubators as complex systems
To be effective, incubators mimic the environmental conditions of cells in a living body (in vivo) to enable successful cell growth in media within the chamber (in vitro). Culturing cells requires not only ideal conditions in the media used, but also in the incubator chamber. Further, if batches are not cultivated under controlled conditions, results may not be reproducible.
In cases where a cell culture has failed to proliferate, there are several avenues of troubleshooting to consider. However, the first point-of failure in cell cultivation is often conditions within the incubator. While modern incubators can automatically adjust conditions based upon measurements from sensors within the incubator itself, those measurements may not be accurate.
Unless a CO2 incubator is newly installed and validated, or recently serviced and re-qualified — and presuming the service included a calibration and adjustment of the integrated sensors — relying solely on the incubator’s measurement capabilities is risky. There are several systems that could fail in any incubator. The costs associated with any one parameter being out of tolerance are high; losing samples is only one possibility.