Technical Articles
A Good Helper for High-Throughput Experiments - NestoHBR High-Throughput Bioreactor
2025-06-19 10:17
High-throughput bioreactors are a revolutionary tool in biotechnology. They significantly accelerate the pace of bioprocess development, optimization, and research by miniaturizing, automating, and parallelizing experiments. Their core value lies in their ability to screen and evaluate a large number of different culture conditions or cell lines/strains in a short period of time using relatively few resources (culture medium, cells, reagents).
The Dilemma of Today's High-Throughput Experimentation
With the rapid advancement of biotechnology, approaches like gene editing and synthetic biology have made it increasingly easy to construct novel engineered strains and cell lines. However, selecting the most suitable strains or cells for industrial production, along with the corresponding culture media and processes, from a large pool of candidate strains or cells remains a significant challenge. Commonly used laboratory screening tools (such as well-plates and shake flasks) are limited by their size and functionality, and cannot achieve the same automated functions as true industrial-scale reactors, such as mixing, shearing, aeration, feeding, pH, and dissolved oxygen control.
Considering the physiological and metabolic characteristics of bacteria/cells, it is more effective to use a fully self-controlled reactor for strain screening and optimization.
Current Status of High-Throughput Reactors
Conventional benchtop reactors operate on a single or dual-organism basis, requiring experimental operations to be performed sequentially, potentially involving different operators. This asynchrony, coupled with differences in operator experience and skill, introduces significant uncertainty, impacting the reliability of experimental data generated using benchtop reactors. Even under optimal conditions, conventional benchtop reactors can only perform a few gradient or control experiments, making them inadequate for design of experiments (DoE) and high-throughput screening studies.
In contrast, although the parallel multi-bioreactor appears to be a combination of multiple reactors, it realizes all operations such as synchronous setting of bioreactor parameters, synchronous calibration of sensors, unified start and stop parameters, and feedback control, thereby ensuring high consistency of various parameters and greatly improving the repeatability of experimental data results.
The NestoHBR high-throughput bioreactor breaks the deadlock.
The core function of parallel bioreactors is to be applied in design of experiments (DoE) and high-throughput screening studies. The key lies in using intelligent technology to simplify operational processes and improve experimental efficiency. The NestoHBR high-throughput bioreactor from Insys is equipped with a recipe programming function, which allows complete experiments to be compiled into templates according to experimental logic and executed uniformly. For DoE experiments, simply modifying the setpoints completes the entire experiment programming. Pre-programmed experiments are fully automated, significantly reducing process operations and ensuring high consistency and reproducibility of the experimental process.
Achieving parallelism requires not only consistency at the software level but also hardware consistency. This hardware foundation consists of actuators such as pumps, mass flow meters, and temperature control modules, as well as detection components such as instruments and transmitters. Each NestoHBR tank has an independent controller module, encompassing all of this hardware. This independent hardware foundation ensures greater overall system stability, ensuring that failure of a single module does not affect the normal operation of other experiments. The reactor assembly process also incorporates a rational assembly layout, protecting sensor signals such as electrodes from interference.
The software supporting the parallel bioreactor is highly automated and intelligent. The integration of software and hardware is the soul of the parallel bioreactor and the fundamental difference between a parallel bioreactor and multiple independent bioreactors.
NestoHBR High-Throughput Bioreactor
The NestoHBR high-throughput bioreactor offers the flexibility of 1-12 modules, each equipped with two tanks, with a maximum working volume of 500ml, fully meeting the needs of experiments of varying scales. Its compact design integrates parameter detection and control, making it more efficient and convenient for users to move around. Disassembly and cleaning are simplified, reducing user workload and significantly saving maintenance time.
All process parameters can be flexibly saved or deleted, significantly simplifying the tedious process of re-entering parameters. The control software records the bioreactor culture process in real time and supports online and remote parameter monitoring. Features such as real-time curves, automatic experimental report output, and sequential programming make complex process control easy. Notably, the device utilizes a flexible programming language, allowing users to edit simple and effective code to achieve specific parameter control requirements without requiring specialized programming knowledge. Users can also pre-set parameter thresholds, enabling the system to automatically and continuously monitor the bioreactor culture process for abnormalities, ensuring smooth experimental progress.
The NestoHBR high-throughput bioreactor also excels in data processing. It can collect data from multiple tanks, obtain real-time data through online sensors, and support offline data analysis. Furthermore, the device displays data in various formats, including trend charts and text, providing comprehensive and intuitive data support.
We sincerely welcome customers who are interested in the NestoHBR high-throughput bioreactor to consult us at any time. We will wholeheartedly provide you with professional answers and services.
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