Who hasn’t been in the lab and accidently bumped one of their cell culture dishes, spilling the precious contents? Or has struggled to grip a dish with gloved hands? Well most people don’t think of cultureware, especially cell culture dishes, as being particularly innovative, but there is a new cell culture dish called the Thermo Scientific™ Nunc™ EasYDish that seeks to address some of these common lab mishaps.

The EasYDish, launched earlier this month, by Thermo Fisher Scientific has some unique, smart design features to improve handling, stacking and transporting of cell cultures in the lab.

Common Cell Culture Dish Handling Complaints

• Hard to grip lid-covered dishes with gloved hands

Any fine motor skill with a gloved hand can present challenges, but gripping a lid-covered dish with a gloved hand can be particularly frustrating. Accidently lifting the lid off the dish may spill the culture contents and result in contamination. The EasYDish has a beveled grip ring that gives gloved hands something substantial to grab on to.

• Dishes that don’t stay put

No one wants to carry one dish at a time and make multiple trips around the lab, so the obvious solution is stacking multiple dishes, but they can be slippery and hard to handle, which makes moving around with a stack of dishes a stressful task. EasYDish has a raised outer edge on the dish lid to prevent sliding and permit secured stacking of multiple dishes on top of each other.

• Getting loose plastic particles in the dish due to the lid rubbing against the dish rim

The EasYDish has a unique non-touch design between the lid and the dish rim, which eliminates the friction during transportation. As an added benefit, this strategic small gap between the lid and the dish rim also allows for sufficient ventilation of the cell culture, while maintaining sterility.

• Receiving broken dishes from the purchase

To enhance clarity of the plastic and save the environment at the same time by minimizing disposable waste, dishes are made with very thin material. This, sometimes, results in breakage of the dishes during shipping and handling. The EasYDish has a proprietary notch design that increases the physical strength of the dish wall and restricts movement of the dish lid, which improves dish integrity during shipping and handling.

Another feature that will be useful for some cell culture applications are the orientation marks on the dish bottom that help to locate cells of interest under the microscope. All of the EasYDishes are tissue culture-treated and tested with Gibco media for Nunclon Delta certification to confirm cell attachment and growth for multiple cell lines.

You can learn more about EasYDish at: https://www.thermofisher.com/easydish and by watching the video below: