Oxford Optronix, a UK provider of advanced research instrumentation for the clinical medicine and life science industries, has added HypoxyLab to its product portfolio.
The Abingdon-based firm claims HypoxyLab is the industry’s first benchtop, HEPA-filtered, precision-controlled hypoxia workstation. It creates contamination-free conditions for a variety of cell-based research fields, including cancer biology, radiation cell biology, cardiovascular research, apoptosis, neurology, stem cell research, multidisciplinary drug development and proteomics.
HypoxyLab provides a highly stable, localised environment in which levels of oxygen, carbon dioxide, temperature and humidity are precisely controlled within a HEPA-filtered isolation work chamber.
Using the optional OxyLite module, HypoxyLab also offers support for direct oxygen partial pressure (pO2) measurements from cell media or tissue using fibre-optic sensors.
The benchtop workstation maintains ultra-stable climatic conditions using processor-controlled temperature and the latest nebuliser-based, humidifier technology – delivering the requisite levels of humidity while maintaining a Class 5 environment.
Concentrations of O2 and CO2 as well as chamber temperature and humidity are controlled through a colour touch-screen display and delivered using electronic gas flow controllers and auto-calibrating sensors. The workstation displays real-time values of chamber O2, CO2, temperature and humidity on the touch-screen and simultaneously records this information onto a USB memory stick for off-line analysis.HypoxyLab’s highly optimised working volume ensures ultra-rapid cell cycling and tissue response times, while precise oxygen profiling and cycling is controlled via the intuitive graphical user interface. This allows researchers to create any number of bespoke oxygen profiling patterns.
'With the growing industry-wide recognition of the need to create physiologically reproducible, low oxygen and hypoxic environments for mammalian cells in the laboratory, we were determined to create a solution for our customers that combines cost-effectiveness and a small form factor with unrivalled accuracy and precision,' said Andy Obeid, CEO of Oxford Optronix.
