£600

This course has been approved by the Royal Society of Biology for the purposes of CPD, this course may be counted as 42 CPD points. Click here for more information.

Our Mammalian Cell Culture ‘Intensive’ course is a rare opportunity to develop hands-on experience with cell culture specialists from pharmaceutical and academic research.

Mammalian Cell Culture is a highly regarded lab technique that is often requested for graduate-level researcher positions in academia and industry. Our Mammalian Cell Culture ‘Intensive’ course offers comprehensive laboratory-based tuition using a range of human and animal cell lines, thus providing a rare opportunity to pursue further education and future careers in Medicine, Pharmacology, Biology, and Biomedical Science.

This course is designed to expose graduates and postgraduates to the fundamental techniques of mammalian cell culture to help them carry out basic cell-culture techniques properly and safely. The course runs for 2 days of lab-based tuitions with experienced scientists covering the laboratory requirements and legal regulations of cell culture in the UK.

Course Content:

During this course, students will work in a Class II Microbiological Safety Cabinet to perform the following techniques on both adherent and suspension cell lines.

• Sterile media preparation.
• Resuspension and culturing of (human and animal) cell lines from frozen stocks.
• Passaging and feeding of cells.
• Cryopreservation of cells.
• Microscopic evaluation of confluence and morphology.
• Cell counting and growth curve calculations.

Students will then have the opportunity to put these new skills into practice by establishing 96 well plate serial dilutions of their cell stocks producing the first set of data for a cell growth curve (the first step for any in-vitro assay) using the commonly used reagents MTT or Alamar Blue. This will allow students to fully understand the complexities of working with mammalian cells and the range of areas where they might be able to apply their new skills. This work will also permit students to perform their own statistical evaluation of ‘cell number’ curves and understand the limits of such assays for the prediction of activity and toxicity.

Learning Outcomes:

• Attendees will benefit from having hands-on laboratory experience in a state-of-the-art industry laboratory at BioGrad Training, as well as from interacting closely with our senior scientists and fellow students throughout the course period.
• Attendees will be able to utilize lab protocols to carry out common mammalian cell culture techniques such as preparing sterile cell culture media, passaging of suspension and adherent cell lines, counting cells using the hemacytometer and the automated cell counter, freezing cells and resuspension of cell stocks, and evaluating confluence and morphology of the cells.
• Attendees can also measure the cell viability and plot the growth curve independently.
•  Attendees can design, perform, and analyse the results of a cell-culture-based experiment.

Prerequisites

• This course introduces all the essential skills required for cell culture however students attending any of our undergraduate and postgraduate courses must be confident and competent in a laboratory setting. Thus, a questionnaire must be completed prior to the commencement of your course to ensure you are able to meet the required competencies.   
• If you do not yet possess the necessary lab skills, you need to attend our 1 day ‘Introduction to laboratory skills’ course or the 5 days ‘Essential Laboratory Techniques’ course before commencing this course.  

Course Endpoint:

Attendees will gain valuable insights into the range of careers and laboratory research opportunities available. We have links with many companies that recruit interns and graduates based on our recommendations. On completion of the course, your new skills will be endorsed by our lecturers on LinkedIn and a reference can be provided upon request.

All our courses can be booked by paying a deposit and using a payment plan over 1,6 or 12 months if required. For more information please contact our Administration Team via email on: student.services@biograd.co.uk or through the contact form here.

Students attending any of our Level 4-6 and Level 7 courses must be confident and competent in a working laboratory. You must be able to walk in and start work selecting correct pipettes and tips, making molar solutions and serial dilutions to attend these courses. A questionnaire must be completed prior to commencement of your course to ensure you are able to meet these required competencies. If you do not yet possess the necessary skills, we recommend you attend one of our 1 day ‘Laboratory Skills’ courses prior to booking this course.

Our courses are under constant review to ensure they remain inline with current protocols within the NHS, research and industry. This means that course content may change.