Remote cell confluence monitoring with the Corning® StackSENSE™ System

Watch this presentation by Jamie Clark, Product Line Manager at Corning Life Sciences, titled: Remote cell confluence monitoring with the Corning^® StackSENSE™ System. This talk was presented at the SelectScience^® Virtual Biopharmaceutical Summit 2020.

Presentation abstract

There is a strong and growing demand for new technologies that address the challenges of development and scale-up of production for the vast number of emerging cell and gene therapy applications. One specific pain point for upstream bioprocess scientists is the inability to easily and reliably monitor cell confluence of adherent and semi-adherent cell types in multilayer vessels. Currently, there is no way to remotely monitor the cell confluence for both small- and production-scale multilayer cell culture vessels in real time. Current time-based methods are highly manual, cumbersome and subjective, often utilizing benchtop microscopy or interrogation of a limited number of surrogate vessels to make an estimation of cell confluence. These methods often produce results that are inaccurate or highly variable, which can lead to poor decision making and suboptimal process performance. Manual methods can also lead to complex process workflows, inconvenient sample scheduling and poor operator ergonomics. 

To address this issue, Corning has invented the StackSENSE™ System, a novel technology that will enable customers to remotely and non-invasively visualize and monitor cell confluence in Corning CellSTACK^® vessels. The system is comprised of a wireless Imaging Base designed to mate with CellSTACK vessels, the proprietary ImagePro^® Image Analysis software and associated computer and network equipment. The StackSENSE System will automatically capture high-quality cell images for remote viewing and analysis in real time while the vessels remain untouched within the incubator. Cell c