atSpiro

23/04/2025

What could a flask-bioreactor do for your lab?

Find out for free by participating in our competition to win a 3-month rental to test the ShakeReactor.

The ShakeReactor is a smarter way to run shake flask cultures. It adds real-time data and automation in just 10 minutes - enabling fed-batch cultivation, automatic pH control, and continuous monitoring.

Additionally, 20 participants will receive a scientist figure made of LEGO® bricks and a mini ShakeReactor model.

For more details, visit: https://shorturl.at/aRrmM

Win a free ShakeReactor rental!

23/04/2025

𝗟𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝗼𝗳 𝗽𝗛 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗹 𝗯𝗼𝘁𝘁𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗰𝗸𝘀 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗰𝗲𝗹𝗹 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻.
In shake flask cultures pH control is often overlooked – but it matters.
Together with Uncommon Bio, we tested porcine iPSC expansion with and without automated pH regulation in a standard shake flask format.

📈 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁: 55% increase in viable cell yield with pH control using the ShakeReactor.
🧪 Same medium, same conditions — the only change was automated pH maintenance (7.2–7.4).
📸 Side-by-side image: iPSC aggregates under 4x magnification:
𝗟𝗲𝗳𝘁: standard protocol without pH control
𝗥𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁: same protocol with automated pH control using the ShakeReactor

This approach doesn't just improve growth — it helps bridge the gap between R&D and scalable production, by allowing you to simulate production like bioreactor conditions earlier in R&D.

📥 Download the white paper to learn more: https://shorturl.at/oQt8a

23/04/2025

Scaling up? Oxygen transfer could be your biggest blind spot.

Shake flasks are a convenient tool for optimizing media, temperature, and pH. But when it’s time to scale up to bioreactors, things often don’t go as planned- leading to costly delays, unpredictable results, and wasted time.
Oxygen limitation is often to blame. Ensuring sufficient oxygenation starts with characterizing the oxygen mass transfer coefficient, kLa, for your conditions. Historically, it was difficult to measure in shake flasks due to the lack of dissolved oxygen monitoring. But new technology has changed that.
The ShakeReactor adds continuous monitoring of dissolved oxygen, making it simple to measure to characterize kLa in shake flasks.

📈 Curious about kLa values for standard conditions or want to learn how to characterize it in your setup?

📥Download the whitepaper: https://shorturl.at/HE7QX

23/04/2025

Why does flask screening fail?

If we’re not screening under the right conditions, a strain that looks promising in a shake flask might fail in a bioreactor—while high-performing candidates are left behind.

Identifying the key conditions to mimic during strain selection is crucial for finding clones that will perform in fed-batch production. A clear example is P. pastoris expressing recombinant protein under methanol induction (AOX1 promoter). Productivity is highly dependent on growth rate, typically peaking well below the maximum growth rate, μ_max.

Yet, most strain selection tools, shake flasks and microtiter plates, use batch cultivation with pulsed methanol. This leads to high, uncontrolled growth rates near μ_max, producing a very different ranking than what we’d observe in fed-batch conditions, where growth rates are carefully controlled.

The ShakeReactor enables screening under production-mimicking conditions, with pH control and controlled feeding, allowing a single person to screen up to 24 clones at a time.

The result? Confidently select clones that will thrive in production.

26/02/2025

𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐠𝐠𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐥𝐨𝐰 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐢𝐧 𝐲𝐢𝐞𝐥𝐝𝐬? Low titers are all too common in recombinant protein expression. The typical workhorse - the trusty shake flask - excels at many things, but providing an optimal environment for protein expression is not one of them. This quickly leads to running multiple shake flasks to get the required culture volume to produce enough of difficult-to-express proteins.

Ideally, recombinant expressions should be performed in the controlled environment of a bioreactor, but when you need to produce multiple different proteins desktop bioreactors quickly become too cumbersome and expensive to run.

The ShakeReactor combines the ease of use of the shake flask with the controlled environment and automation of a desktop bioreactor. With the 𝐒𝐡𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫, you can achieve up to 𝟖𝟓𝟕% 𝐡𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐢𝐧 𝐲𝐢𝐞𝐥𝐝 compared to flasks.

✅ 𝟖𝐱 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐢𝐧 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐭𝐲
✅ 𝐑𝐞𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝟖 𝐅𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐤𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐚 𝐒𝐡𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫
✅ 𝐋𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐯𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐦𝐞, 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭 - 𝐧𝐨 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐫 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠

Want to see the data? Check out our two case studies on recombinant protein production in E. coli using the ShakeReactor: https://atspiro.com/case-ecoli

26/02/2025

🚨 Bioreactors Fully Booked—Again? 🚨
You're ready to run experiments, but the equipment is occupied. The backlog is growing, deadlines are slipping, and getting more bioreactors isn’t an option. Sound familiar?

💡 Double your bioreactor capacity—without taking up more lab space.
ShakeReactor upgrades your existing shake flask setup, transforming flasks into bioreactors. No permanent footprint, no excessive costs—just a smarter way to run cultures in parallel with continuous monitoring and automated control.

🐹/🦠More experiments. Less waiting.
We believe that the equipment should be ready when the scientists are, not the other way around. That's why we developed the ShakeReactor. Connect to learn how it can increase capacity in your cell cultivation or fermentation laboratory.

15/08/2024

Why spend hours setting up a traditional bench-top bioreactor when you can transform your flask into one in just 10 minutes?

The ShakeReactor is designed with user experience in mind, making it easy to operate and quick to set up. It has programmable pumps, online monitoring and control capabilities, all managed with intuitive software that anyone can use.

Ready to optimize your lab's workflow? Visit atspiro.com to request whitepapers, book a meeting, or learn more.

15/08/2024

We don’t like to brag but look at the wide range of organisms our customers have successfully cultured in the ShakeReactor!

The ShakeReactor is an easy and versatile bioreactor designed to streamline lab-scale cultivations, whether you're working with bacteria, yeast, fungi, algae or mammalian cells. By adding DO and pH measurement and automated feeding – controlled by a user friendly software, the ShakeReactor delivers enhanced control and better performance compared to flask cultivations.

Ready to optimize your lab's workflow? Contact us at atSpiro.com to learn more about how the ShakeReactor can enhance your research!

Credits to picture: https://t.ly/p72ha

15/08/2024

Can you get a hashtag that's cheaper to run than traditional hashtag flask cultivations? Or save hundreds of hours annually on bioreactor cultivations, without losing out on valuable data and functionalities?

The answer is yes.

With the hashtag , you can reduce the time spent running a benchtop bioreactor by a factor of 10, while retaining essential functionalities such as pH regulation, feeding, and live data monitoring.

Compared to flask cultures with manual feeding, the ShakeReactor pays for itself after just 30 cultures, by automating manual interventions such as feeding and sampling, while providing you with crucial control and insights that you wouldn't otherwise have.

The ShakeReactor is an easy-to-use automated bioreactor system that only takes 10 minutes to set up, greatly reducing the hands-on time needed to run mammalian cell cultures with feeding and pH control.

15/08/2024

🧪Choose the fermentation setup that best fits your needs – whether it's for quick experiments in the lab, efficient monitoring & control, or scalable production processes.
🔬The hashtag can do all three, at a fraction of the time and cost compared to a desktop hashtag .

Don't compromise on quality or affordability. Upgrade to the ShakeReactor today and improve your fermentation processes.

15/08/2024

👀Peak into the black box ⚫📦 of shake flask fermentations 🧪
Shake flask fermentations are a black box. Even frequent manual sampling won’t tell you what is going on. So, what do you do when your culture is not growing as expected?

With continuous monitoring, the ShakeReactor reveals insights into how dissolved oxygen can indicate growth limitations.

🔬 Minimal media – Cells thrive with all required nutrients, exhibiting an exponential decrease in dissolved oxygen followed by a rapid rise to 100%—indicative of unhindered growth and complete glucose depletion.

🧪 Nitrogen limited – Initial oxygen depletion is identical to M9 media. The exponential growth is followed by an almost constant oxygen consumption, indicative of hindered growth, until full depletion of glucose at ~24 hours.

🧫 Carbon limited – Mirrors full media trends but rebounds to 100% sooner, reflecting earlier glucose depletion.

Discover what's happening in your fermentations! Visit atspiro.com/demo to book a trial or email us at [email protected].

16/04/2024

🔬 E. coli in minimal media with maximum monitoring! 🔍✨
See when your organisms grow, lack oxygen, or run out of nutrients by monitoring dissolved oxygen in your shake flasks using the ShakeReactor.

The following video shows E. coli in buffered minimal media:

📈 Exponential growth is clearly observed in the sharp drop in dissolved oxygen, perfectly aligning with the opacity change of the media.

💡 0% dissolved oxygen readings during exponential growth indicate insufficient shaking speed or inadequate fill volume.

👩‍🔬 pH fluctuates even in buffered media, showing the need for a pH control.

Monitoring alone allows you to gain valuable insights from your cultivations, but in addition to that, the ShakeReactor can also accurately control your experiments using its three programmable pumps.

Know what your cells are up to! Visit atspiro.com/demo to book a trial, or write us on [email protected]