Why Does Culture Media Need To Be Filtered?
During the preparation of culture media, there are impurities and microorganisms that cannot be removed by ordinary sterilization. Here are some of the main reasons to filter cell culture media.
Microbial Contamination Prevention
Cell culture requires sterile conditions because the presence of microorganisms may cause cell infection and affect experimental results. Through filtration, harmful microorganisms such as microorganisms, bacteria and fungi can be effectively removed from the air.
By employing filtration methods, laboratories can create and maintain a controlled environment where the risk of microbial intrusion is significantly minimized. This preventive measure not only protects the health and vitality of the cultured cells but also upholds the scientific rigor and accuracy of experimental outcomes in cell culture studies.
Microbial Contamination Prevention
Particles and cell debris present in culture media can exert detrimental effects on cell culture systems. These contaminants have the potential to interfere with experimental results, compromise cell health, and impede proper cell growth. Inconsistent cell culture conditions can lead to skewed findings and hinder the reproducibility of experiments, making the removal of particles and cell debris a crucial aspect of maintaining a high-quality cell culture environment.Filtration effectively removes these particles and debris, ensuring the purity of the culture medium.
Improve Culture Medium Transparency
In cell culture research, improving the transparency of the culture medium through filtration is instrumental for precise microscopic observation. A clear culture medium enhances the contrast and clarity of cell images under the microscope, allowing researchers to more accurately assess cell shape, structure, and activity. Transparent culture media contribute to obtaining reliable data and results in cell biology studies.
Filtration also helps improve the clarity of the culture medium. This is critical for observing cell growth and performing microscopy, as clear media better supports observation of cells.
Clarification filtration
In the coarse filtration, you can consider the use of gauze for particulate impurity retention, if you need a higher precision requirements, you can also use polypropylene (PP) filters, or glass fiber membrane folded cartridge, these two membrane material cartridges have a very high dirt-holding capacity and retention rate, the fiberglass cartridge is characterized by a high throughput, you can quickly retain the impurity particles and fine micro-organisms.
Prefiltration
Removes gums, aggregates, non-target proteins, lipids and particles prior to downstream purification and protects downstream sterilizing filters. This step, which can also be called reduced bacterial filtration, is a protective step before terminal filtration, and also improves filtration efficiency and saves process costs. It is recommended to use a filter element of 1μm or less, and according to the need, you can also add a filter element of about 2μm before the 1μm filter element for better results.
Final sterilization filtration
Filter membranes with a pore size of 0.22μm and below are usually used to ensure that the finished product is free of bacteria and mycoplasma.
Integrity testing
Cartridges are subjected to appropriate challenge tests and integrity test data is provided to correlate the results.
What Sanitek can do in this procedure?
By ensuring the functionality and durability of your equipment, Sanitek’s tailored filtration solutions contribute to long-term cost savings on maintenance and operational expenses.
Sanitek’s market-leading filtration systems specialize in the removal of oil and particles from water streams, addressing environmental regulations or injection well standards. Our innovative offerings encompass oil adsorptive guard filters, high-efficiency coalescers, as well as disposable and washable solid cartridge solutions.
For this specific application, Sanitek designs and manufactures filter cartridges and filter housings. Our Oltek pleated filter cartridge and Oltek string wound filter cartridge stand out as ideal solutions for maintaining the required purity levels in this condition.