Biospherix

The lab is buzzing about the upcoming arrival of our new ‘baby’: the Biospherix hypoxia chamber.

For our new placenta study, we need to conduct our metabolic assays on placental tissue under low oxygen (actually, physiologic) conditions. We considered using a flush box, which would allow us to just stick the explants/cells into the box, purge it with a low oxygen gas mix, and stick it in a regular C02 incubator – cheaper, easy, and a great solution for short term or pilot studies. But, what about the explant dissection, media changes, drug treatments, etc? All of those manipulations would expose the tissue to room air, and make it more of a “hypoxia/reperfusion” experiment. Not ideal.

So, we looked into a lot of options, and decided on the Biospherix Xvivo System Model X3. This is a beauty. With the Xvivo system, we can perform our experiments under continuously controlled conditions of O2, CO2, and temperature. Oxygen levels are maintained without interruption inside the hypoxic workstation during incubation, handling of cultures, and cell analysis.

Check back for more updates on how the Xvivo is performing and helping us maintain physiologic conditions in our experiments.