Direct, Accurate, Fast Cell Counting - Take Control of Your Microbial Process Development

Traditional methods like OD600 offer only rough estimates, limiting your process potential. BactoBox from SBT Instruments provides accurate bacterial cell counts in minutes. This enables you to unlock the full potential of your microbial processes.

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Maximize output with precise microbial control

Optimize Yield

BactoBox lets you accurately track microbial growth in real-time, enabling timely decisions that directly boost yield. Because microbial processes scale logarithmically small adjustments in timing of harvest, induction of protein expression, or sporulation can significantly increase your overall output.

Case story coming soon:
Read how reliance on OD600, the most common metric for bacterial harvesting and IPTG induction, led a process developer to create a process that was 16 hours longer than necessary.

Deliver reliable results every time

Improve Consistency

Fermentation processes depend on precise control of input parameters. One critical yet challenging factor to manage consistently is inoculum size and quality. BactoBox empowers you to precisely control your inoculum, ensuring reproducible process outcomes and reliable product quality.

Technical review coming soon:
Using OD600 to standardize processes is a key contributor to batch-to-batch variability. Explore our in-depth technical review of how seemingly identical OD600 readings can result in vastly different cell concentrations.

Using OD600 to standardize processes is a key contributor to batch-to-batch variability. Explore our in-depth technical review of how seemingly identical OD600 readings can result in vastly different cell concentrations.

Link to technical review.

Ensure operational efficiency

Streamline Production Processes

Use BactoBox to optimize your microbial processes, precisely matching your process endpoint with the timetable of downstream operations. By fine-tuning inoculum size, harvest timing, and microbial growth rates, you can consistently maximize production efficiency and reduce operational costs.

Case story coming soon:
What if you could design your fermentation process to finish exactly when it needs to - minimizing idle time, syncing perfectly with downstream steps, and getting the fermenter back in use faster?

Read how a process engineer employed BactoBox to establish a process that concluded at exactly 12 hours.

Learn About a BactoBox Customer

Biose Industrie, a leading CDMO specializing in live biotherapeutic products (LBPs), relies on BactoBox for process development and production. Conducting thousands of measurements annually, they ensure high-quality bacterial cultivation with greater consistency and precision, optimizing biotherapeutic outcomes.

By integrating BactoBox into their manufacturing, Biose is setting a new industrial standard for microbial enumeration. Rapid viable cell counts in process and release testing help accelerate the path from clinical trials to market authorization for their innovative live biotherapeutics. Read more about SBT and Biose's collaboration here.

Using BactoBox for Microbial Process Development - FAQ

Find answers to the most frequently asked questions when using BactoBox to accelerate microbial process development.

What makes BactoBox an improvement over OD600?

OD600 is a common method for tracking growth in microbial process development, but it cannot reliably estimate growth rates or lag phases due to the influence of cell morphology and media composition on the measurements. Direct cell counting techniques like BactoBox or CFUs provide accurate data for extracting precise growth kinetics. If you want to optimize fermentation with a model-based approach rather than trial and error, a direct cell counting method is essential.

Can BactoBox perform online or at-line sampling?

No, BactoBox is not designed for online or at-line sampling. It is best suited for lab-scale and larger-scale fermentations where grab sampling is already standard practice for measuring accurate bacterial concentrations.

Can I use BactoBox in media that contain non-celluar particles?

Yes, but a one-time gating customization is required to ensure non-cellular particles do not affect bacterial counts. This customization is specific to your bacterial genera and allows accurate enumeration in complex media.

Can BactoBox count both live and dead cells?

With customization, BactoBox can detect the onset of cell death. It shows a trend correlation to plate counting, but results will not match one-to-one since CFUs cannot detect viable-but-non-culturable cells, and some dead cells may still have an intact membrane. BactoBox is a useful tool for monitoring when cell death begins in your process.