1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cell culture apparatus, a cell culture method, a cell culture program and a cell culture system for evaluating the culture state of a cell and culturing the cell.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the related art, cell culture, in particular, suspension cell culture used for an immune cell therapy is executed by human operation in most cases. For example, cells sampled from a patient are inoculated to a flask having an antibody (inducer) attached thereto together with a culture medium, and stored in an incubator. Then, the flask is taken out from the incubator every day to observe the culture state (for example, the state of proliferation) using a microscope or the like. When the proliferation is found, or when a predetermined time period has elapsed from the cell inoculation, the culture medium is added to the flask to culture the cell (for example, proliferation).
In the manual cell culture as described above, the daily operation is executed on the basis of a culture evaluation depending on the experience of a culture engineer, or the culture operation is executed homogenously for all the cells on the basis of a predetermined manual. Therefore, the culture (for example, proliferation) might not be sufficient depending on the sampled cells. In order to induce the proliferation ability of the cell which is different from patient to patient, to a maximum extent, an objective culture evaluation and the culture operation by the hour on the basis of this evaluation are necessary.
Part of such problem is solved in the culture of adherent cells as described in JP-A-2002-218995. In other words, in JP-A-2002-218995, the proliferation ability of the entire cell population is understood by observing the form of the individual adherent cells in a non-invasive and non-destructive manner through the images.
As an example which is used for the manual cell culture as described above, JP-A-2005-73566 discloses a cell culture system in which a plurality of canisters (storing units) are arranged in a single incubator (culture chamber) and culture vessels are stored in the canisters one by one for culturing cells. In this culture system, the culture environment is adapted to be the same for all the canisters in the single incubator.
However, in the case of the culture of suspension cells used for the immune cell therapy, devices for evaluating the culture state of the cells objectively or for culturing the cells on the basis of the evaluation do not exist.
In the manual cell culture including the cell culture system disclosed in JP-2005-73566, an operator who is engaged in the culture, is required to collect culture environment data in the incubator or the canisters and record the log of the culture operation such as change of the culture medium, which is a very complicated work. There is a probability that trouble in the cell culture cannot be known adequately.