Sanford, Maine — The Baker Company, Inc. today launched Cultivo™, a new CO2 incubator designed to prevent contamination and deliver precise, stable and user-defined control over three variables critical for optimal cell growth—temperature, CO2 concentration and relative humidity—all without noticeable condensation during normal operation. The introduction of a CO2 incubator with this unique combination of proven benefits is a natural next step in Baker’s evolution as the leader in the development of contamination control technologies.

Cultivo™ – The Contamination Preventer

The design of Cultivo draws on Baker’s extensive experience to protect against the threat of accidental cell culture contamination from a wide variety of sources due to everyday activities.

“From the beginning, we designed Cultivo to be a ‘contamination preventer,’” said Dan Eagleson, Vice President of Baker. Cultivo is armed with an array of features designed not simply to control contamination, but to prevent it. Vertical, uni-directional downward airflow delivers unrivaled clean air (ISO Class 4, Class 10) to the incubator chamber within 60 seconds after a door opening, made possible by a large, full-face HEPA filter. A fogless interior door provides a crystal-clear view of cultures on every shelf, reducing the need for door openings when contaminants are more likely to enter the chamber. Optional ultrasonic humidification allows users to eliminate the use of a water pan—and the risk of contaminants that typically go along with it.

If a contamination does occur, an optional, pre-programmed and easy-to-follow vaporized hydrogen peroxide biodecontamination protocol is available, which effectively kills a wide variety of vegetative bacteria, bacterial spores, fungi, fungal spores and viruses in under four hours.

InteliCELL™ – Meet Your Incubator’s Brain

The precise, stable and user-defined environmental conditions Cultivo provides are possible through the use of InteliCELL™, a sophisticated P.I.D. control algorithm. By accounting for factors that other technologies leave as unknown, InteliCELL consistently maintains user-defined set points, giving users ultimate control with minimal effort.

“This is beyond smart technology,” said Mr. Eagleson. “This is the intelligence that drives the performance of Cultivo, delivering a level of precision, control, and uniformity not previously available to researchers within a CO2 incubator. This allows them to explore the impact that each environmental parameter—or a change in those parameters—will have on their work.”

The core of InteliCELL’s design is a closed feedback loop that works just like the human nervous system, sensing and responding to changing conditions in a controlled way. Through InteliCELL, Cultivo provides:

• True active control over the relative humidity (RH) variable. Technologies to provide precise, user-defined control of temperature and CO2 concentration are widely available, but the same is not true for RH. Through InteliCELL, Cultivo corrects this problem by turning full control over RH to researchers with two programmable set point ranges.

• Superior condensation control. Cultivo is the only CO2 incubator that delivers relative humidity levels above 90% with virtually no noticeable condensation. By factoring in variables such as surface temperature gradient and RH sensor accuracy that other technologies ignore, InteliCELL is able to maintain high levels of humidity and prevent the formation of condensation on nearly all visible surfaces.

“Define Optimal” Campaign Delivers Challenge to Researchers

Cultivo is being launched alongside a new campaign to support Baker’s recent rebrand. “Define Optimal” encourages researchers to consider whether existing technologies provide them with a truly “optimal” environment for their work. As it relates to CO2 incubators, “Define Optimal” calls the relative humidity variable and contamination prevention technologies into question.

“Most CO2 incubators come with claims to provide ‘optimal’ conditions for tissue and cell culture growth, but researchers need to ask themselves several important questions about that,” said Mr. Eagleson. “How do I define optimal? What does it mean for my work? What will impact the integrity of my research, the cells and cell lines I am studying? Which variables would I like to control and how do the HEPA filters and UV decontamination methods utilized within most incubators today actually work to prevent or control contamination? We challenge our customers to question whether they know what their incubator is providing them at the end of the day. At Baker, we know there are a number of variables that threaten the integrity of our customer’s work. We want to mitigate those threats and deliver the tools our customers need to achieve excellence in their work, from the open bench to the incubator.”

For more information about Cultivo, including a video demonstration and test report results depicting how quickly Cultivo reaches ISO Class 4 clean room conditions, please visit www.bakerco.com/products/cultivo.

ABOUT BAKER

Since 1949, The Baker Company has been an industry pioneer in the field of biological safety with an unparalleled passion for helping its customers advance science, discovery and clinical care. The company was first established in response to a growing need to protect hospital workers from infectious diseases and the dangerous process of drug preparation. As solutions for air containment and contamination control have evolved over the years, Baker has been at the forefront of design and innovation, insisting on taking no shortcuts and applying no minimum standards to the solutions that they supply. Its Baker Ruskinn division is one of the world’s leading suppliers of gas-controlled, anaerobic and modified atmosphere workstations for use in medical microbiology, cell biology, cancer research, molecular medicine and stem cell laboratories.