In-hood heat gun sterilization of cell-culture and small-animal surgical instruments

SIRVAN, ANA LAURA; FILEVICH, OSCAR

Ciudad de Buenos Aires

Congreso; Reunión conjunta de sociedades de biociencias; 2017

SAIC - SAIB - SAI - SAA - SAB - SAFE - SAFIS - SAH - SAP

One of the most common causes of failure in experiments involving culture of cell lines and primary cells are contaminations by either bacteria or fungi. These contaminations often comes from the very same instruments used to perform the experiments.We hypothesized that using a readily available, household-grade 2 KW hot-air gun for heat-sterilizing the required instruments we could achieve full sterilization in very short times.? The heat gun is capable of reaching very high air temperatures.? The heat gun is capable of reaching very high air flow rates.To test the hypothesis1 We inoculated dissection scissors, forceps and cell-culture coverslips with E. coli and fungal spores.2 We exposed the material to the hot air flow of the heat gun.3 We checked if the technique actually works by plating the material on LB broth.This shows that the proposed method is useful for sterilizing cell culture material and small surgical instruments above 200° C and 15 seconds. If used with care, the heat-gun may be used inside the flow hood. Instruments can be re sterilized in just a few seconds "just in case" accidentally contaminated during surgery.