Automated Cell and Tissue Culture

Robust yet highly-specialized cell culture processes play a key role in almost all areas of modern life sciences. The rapid reproducible supply of cells or tissue samples in high piece numbers is one of the greatest challenges faced by applied biotechnology, pharmaceutics and diagnostics.

Fraunhofer IPA pioneers the field of automated 2D and 3D cell culture. The “Tissue Factory” is the first ever automated high-throughput system that is capable of combining 2D cell cultures with the construction of 3D epidermal skin structures.

Automated cell and tissue culture is more than just the mere combination of biology and automation. In order to successfully transfer a manual cell culture step to a partially or fully-automated process, knowledge of the process and experience in handling cell cultures is essential. Our multidisciplinary team of biology and technology experts has extensive experience in implementing cell culture processes with the use of technical systems. We analyze these processes, adapt them to automated process sequences and develop new key technologies to put them into practice.

Our aim is clear: we want to create an automation solution which enables new protocols to be carried out automatically without having to adapt the cell system to the automated device.