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Hello Guenter,
I still use old fashioned reusable glassware for cell culture. The
chambered coverslips and glass-bottom multiwell plates are relatively
fragile, and they are diffucult to clean without breaking. The glue that
holds the glass to the plastic can disintegrate and you end up with
leaky chambers (which is very frustrating and messy).
The surface treatment necessary depends on the cell lines being
cultured, but I would imagine that the wells could be re-treated without
too much of a problem. The hard parts are washing to the point of
scrupulous cleanliness and sterilizing. One approach would be to wash
the culture vessels with soap/water, rinse well, soak in 70% ethanol and
let dry under a bacteriocidal UV lamp in a laminar flow hood. Then coat
with whatever substrate is necessary for cell adherence under sterile
conditions. It is possible that some bacterial endotoxins could left
behind which would complicate immunological assays, so the washing would
be critical. The glues on the commercial chambered coverglasses will not
hold up long under this sort of regimen; I'm pretty sure these things
are thoughtfully engineered to fall apart and you might get quite a few
leakers. Cutting out the ethanol soak might help in this respect. Making
your own reusable chambered coverglasses would probably be more
successful also.
-Karl

Guenter Giese wrote:

> Search the CONFOCAL archive at
> http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?S1=confocal
>
> Dear microscopists,
>
> multiwell glass bottom cell culture plates suitable for confocal
> microscopy are quite expensive (15 to 50 € / $ each), and we would
> like to reuse them if possible. We do time lapse microscopy
> experiments on living cells
>
> Reuse of glassware in cell culture was (is still?) commonplace, but
> the combination of glass and plastic and the high surface to volume
> ratio of multiwell plates may be disadvantageous in this respect.
>
>
> Two scenarios:
>
> i) Only some wells of the multiwell plate are used for cell culture in
> one experiment: Used wells could be treated individually after the
> experiment to kill any living cells / bacteria and to inactivate viruses.
> - Which chemicals / methods are safe in preventing collateral damage
> to neighboring, unused wells?
>
> ii) All wells are used:
> - By which method could one clean and treat the plates to allow proper
> growth of the cells (cleaning / surface treatment protocol)?
>
> I know that it is wise to use new material, but at least for
> preliminary checks we would like to reuse the plates. One could also
> preclean new plates to allow comparison of results (after comparison
> of results obtained with used vs unused plates).
>
> Guenter
>
> ------------------------------------------
> Dr. Guenter Giese
> Light Microscopy Facility
> Dept. of Biomedical Optics, MPI fuer Medizinische Forschung
> Jahnstr. 29, D-69120 Heidelberg, Germany
> Phone (+49) 6221-486-360 (Fax: -325)
> e-mail: [log in to unmask]
> http://www.mpimf-heidelberg.mpg.de/~ggiese/lightmicro


--
Karl Garsha
Light Microscopy Specialist
Imaging Technology Group
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
405 North Mathews Avenue
Urbana, IL 61801
Office: B650J
Phone: 217.244.6292
Fax: 217.244.6219
Mobile: 217.390.1874
www.itg.uiuc.edu