Patent Application
20160175837
The present invention relates generally to the storage and monitoring of biospecimens in a temperate control storage environment, such as the storage of tissue, blood, plasma, urine and other materials taken from the human body in cryogenic tanks or other reduced temperature environment.
Biospecimens are collected and stored in many different types of facilities for a great variety of applications. Such applications include the storage of samples collected during clinical trials in pharmaceutical companies, research samples used in university laboratories, samples archived in hospitals, samples used in the discovery of biological markers for diagnostic testing, forensic samples from crime or disaster scenes and so on. Cord blood and stem cell samples are one example of a biological sample required to be stored in very low temperature environments.
Typically in systems for storing bio samples, each of a large number of samples is stored in its own plastic bag, tube or other container. The small plastic bag, tube or other container is stored in a storage cassette with is in turn inserted into a rack. The rack holding a plurality of storage cassettes which each stores one or more biospecimens in a container is then placed in a temperature controlled storage environment, such as a cryogenic tank. Each tank typically stores a plurality of racks and accordingly stores a great many biological samples.
The use of aluminium or steel cassettes/canisters has been an established practice of many bio repositories. These cassettes are relatively cheap and require low technical skills in order to manufacture. The cassettes are formed into different sizes in order to accommodate different sized bags or samples. These bags contain biological fluids or samples for research or medical use. The bags are manufactured normally independently from the manufactures of the cassettes. The bags are typically manufactured in sizes that range from 50 ml up to 250 or 500 ml. The cassettes are stored in racks, which are also manufactured from aluminium or stainless steel. The overall approach to the above described system is low cost and simple, however there is little consideration given to user handling, safety or thermal considerations of the biospecimens contained inside the cassettes.
It would be desirable to provide a system for storing and monitoring biospecimens which addresses the above mentioned concerns. It would also desirable to provide a system for storing and monitoring biospecimens which ameliorates and/or overcomes one or more problems or inconveniences of the prior art.
The above discussion of background art is included to explain the context of the present invention. It is not to be taken as an admission that any of the material or equipment referred to was published, known, or part of the common general knowledge at the priority date of any of the claims of this specification.
According to an aspect of the present invention, there is provided a storage cassette for storing biospecimens, including: a housing having a substantially hollow interior to receive at least one biospecimen container via a housing opening; and a cover for closing the housing opening.
In one or more embodiments, the storage cassette further includes a lock mechanism adapted to be moved between a locked position in which the cover is maintained in a closed position preventing access to the housing interior and an unlocked position in which the cover can be moved to an open position allowing access to the housing interior.
In one or more embodiments, the cover is pivotally attached at one side to the housing, and wherein the lock mechanism acts to secure an opposite side of the cover to the housing in the locked position and acts to release the opposite side of the cover from the housing in the unlocked position.
The storage cassette may further include a grip portion to enable manual movement of the lock mechanism between the locked and unlocked positions.
In one or more embodiments, the lock mechanism may be configured to move between the locked and unlocked positions in a linear direction along an edge of the storage cassette.
Alternatively, in one or more embodiments the lock mechanism is configured to move between the locked and unlocked positions respectively by being pushed towards and pulled away from the housing.
In one or more embodiments, the storage cassette may further include a locked/unlocked state indicator observable by a human operator.
In one or more embodiments, the cover is transparent to allow a human operator to visually inspect the housing interior.
In one or more embodiments, the housing is coloured to provide a visual indication of the type of biospecimen housed in the storage cassette.
In one or more embodiments, one or both of the housing and cover may include an inner surface with ribbed contours to create an air insulation barrier for reducing thermal excursions of the biospecimen housed in the storage cassette.
In one or more embodiments, the storage cassette may further include a latch mechanism which, when the storage cassette is inserted into a rack, prevents inadvertent removal of the storage cassette from the rack.
The latch mechanism may include a projection for engagement in a corresponding aperture in the rack, the projection being located in the corresponding aperture when the storage cassette is inserted into the rack.
In one or more embodiment, the storage cassette includes means for affixing a machine readable tag to the cassette
According to another aspect of the invention, there is provided a rack for storing biospecimens, including a plurality of stacked rack elements, each rack element including one or more interlocking mechanisms for securing adjacent rack elements, wherein each rack element is adapted to receive a storage cassette as described here above.
According to yet another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a rack for storing biospecimens, including a plurality of stacked rack elements, each rack element including one or more interlocking mechanisms for securing adjacent rack elements, wherein each rack element includes a housing having a substantially hollow interior to receive at least one biospecimen container via a housing opening; a cover for closing the housing opening; and means for affixing a machine readable tag to the cassette.
In one or more embodiments, the rack may further include a handle secured to the upper most of the stacked rack elements.
Embodiments of the invention will now be described, by way of example only, with reference to the accompanying drawings. It is to be understood that the particularity of the drawings and embodiments does not supersede the generality of the preceding description of the invention.
In the drawings:
Referring now to
A machine readable tag 18 is preferably provided on the storage cassette 10. The tag 18 is typically manufactured separately from, and then affixed to, the storage cassette 10 by suitable means. For example, a hole or aperture may be formed in the housing 12 into which a cylindrical machine readable tag may be inserted and fixed. In other embodiments, the storage cassette may not be provided and tracking/monitoring of the cassette and its contents may be performed by other means.
In this embodiment the storage cassette has a substantially rectangular shape and the cover 14 is pivotally attached on a first side 20 of the storage cassette by a hinge 22 running along the side 20 of the storage cassette. The shape of the storage cassette shown in
One such storage environment is depicted in
Once a desired number of storage cassettes have been arranged in the rack 42, the operator 40 then places the rack 42 into a tank 44 in which the temperature and possibly other storage conditions are controlled. The machine readable tag affixed to each storage cassette is able to be interrogated by the operator 40 via a tag interrogation device 46 in order not only to identify each storage cassette but also to monitor the temperature to which the biospecimen stored in the storage cassette has been exposed.
Details of embodiments of biospecimen storage cassettes, racks and tanks are described in International Patent Application No. WO 2013/053011 to the present Applicant, the entire contents of which is hereby incorporated into the present specification by reference. Details of an embodiment of a device for interrogating the machine readable tag are disclosed in International Patent Application No. WO 2010/037166 to the present Applicant, the entire contents of which are also incorporated into the present specification by reference.
The cover 14 of the storage cassette 10 as shown in
In a similar vein, the housing 12 is preferably coloured to provide a visual indication of the type of biospecimens housed in the storage cassette. Several different coloured housings may be provided for various types of storage cassettes that may be inserted into the rack 42 and then subsequently placed in the tank 44, in order to enable easy identification of various types of biospecimens that may be stored within the various storage containers of the rack 42 and tank 44.
The storage cassette 10 includes a number of other advantageous features. For example, one or both of the housing 12 and cover 14 includes an inner surface with ribbed contours (which can be seen in
The storage cassette 10 also includes a latch mechanism 28 which, when the storage cassette 10 is inserted into a rack 42, prevents inadvertent removal of the storage cassette 10 from the rack 42. A first embodiment of the latch mechanism 28 is depicted in
An alternative embodiment of the latch feature is depicted in
Whilst
Returning once again to
In a first embodiment of the lock mechanism shown in
It will be appreciated that other embodiments of storage cassette may include different lock mechanisms to those depicted in
Referring again to
It can be further seen from
Although shown to be of unitary construction in
In the example shown in
The rack 180 further includes a handle 196 which includes lock members configured to engage with corresponding lock members on an upper most rack element in the rack 180. Conveniently, a machine readable tag may be affixed to the handle 196.
It will be appreciated that the arrangement depicted in
However, rather than merely being configured to enable the insertion of a storage cassette, the rack element 200 includes a housing 210 and cover 212 of the sort described in relation to
Various advantageous are provided by the above mentioned embodiments of the invention. These include the following: The storage cassettes are prevented from inadvertently falling out of storage racks during use;
Whilst the invention has been described in conjunction with a limited number of embodiments, it will be appreciated by those in the art that many alternatives, modification or variations are possible in light of the foregoing description. The present invention is intended to embrace all such alternatives, modifications and variations as may fall within the spirit and scope of the invention as disclosed.
| Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| PCT/AU2014/000564 | 5/30/2014 | WO | 00 |
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 61858755 | Jul 2013 | US |
