Replica-moulded polydimethylsiloxane culture vessel lids attenuate osmotic drift in long-term cell cultures

An imbalance in medium osmolarity is a determinant that affects cell culture longevity. Even in humidified incubators, evaporation of water leads to a gradual increase in osmolarity over time. We present a simple replica-moulding strategy for producing self-sealing lids adaptable to standard, small-size cell-culture vessels. They are made of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), a flexible, transparent and biocompatible material, which is gas-permeable but largely impermeable to water. Keeping cell cultures in a humidified 5% CO2 incubator at 37 degrees C, medium osmolarity increased by +6.86 mosmol/kg/day in standard 35 mm Petri dishes, while PDMS lids attenuated its rise by a factor of four to changes of +1.72 mosmol/kg/ day. Depending on the lid membrane thickness,pH drifts at ambient CO2 levels were attenuated by a factor of 4 to 9. Comparative evaporation studies at temperatures below 60 degrees C yielded a 10-fold reduced water vapour flux of 1.75 g/day/ dm 2 through PDMS lids as compared with 18.69 g/day/dm 2 with conventional Petri dishes. Using such PDMS lids,about 2/3 of the cell cultures grew longer than 30 days in vitro. Among these,the average survival time was 69 days with the longest survival being 284 days under otherwise conventional cell culture conditions.