Biological materials are traditionally difficult to track because they vary greatly in size, storage, and information needs, and they are easily propagated. As a result, traditional chemical inventory approaches don't apply well to biological materials.
Differences in Biologicals and Chemicals Management
Biologicals and chemicals have very different storage management needs. Freezer sample management, for example, is challenging in the typical biochemistry lab. Restriction enzymes, cell lines, culture samples, active compounds all have different identifying characteristics, and in most cases the quantity is not relevant. Often a researcher simply wants to know which freezer box holds the enzymes they need ("Where can I find Hind-III?"), or where a cell line is located ("Where can I get a sample of human endothelial cells HDMEC?") -- not how much is on hand. Thus, the biologicals inventory system needs to accommodate not only traditional inventory functions found in chemical tracking solutions but also biological-oriented features.
Biologicals Materials Management Requirements
Biologists, biochemists, molecular biologists, and other biological researchers should be able to easily maintain traceability and location of biological samples of all types. Freezer management, inventory counts, sample location, barcoding, and informatics should all be available together in a single, intuitive interface.
Some important capabilities of a biological materials management system are:
- Easily maintain traceability and location of biological samples of all types
- Track different biological criteria in inventory by user-defined properties
- Track biological material by sample or stock location
- Split samples and maintain the parentage of all samples
Researchers need to be able to keep track of sample and stock locations. Units should be flexible enough to meet varying needs, including the ability to measure in any unit or just track “vials.” The ability to easily split samples and maintain the parentage of all samples is crucial. Integration with hand-held solutions, such as PDAs, allows researchers to easily update freezer inventory in a fraction of the time it takes to perform the task using paper clipboard logs.
Components of the Ideal Solution
Variations in information for biological materials can be dramatic. Cell lines require media information; enzymes require cleavage sites or catalysts; viruses require host cell lines. A thoughtfully constructed biological materials management solution will allow users to define material properties. For instance, researchers should be able to specify a new property for a cell type, then further categorize it by red cells, white cells, etc., and then further segment the cell type by specific identification tags.
Along with standard criteria such as location or species, the ability to track containers of reagents, bacteria or purified plasma enables labs to track biologicals in even greater detail through user-defined fields that suit their particular work processes.
When evaluating solutions look for flexibility in defining new attributes, including reference number, user-defined type, species variety, genes of interest, transgenic organism , and research notes. In addition, the ability to flag the biological with hazards information and handling requirements, such as biosafety level, storage, and PPE (Personal Protected Equipment) should be provided. These features make it easy to find any biological material in inventory using very specific criteria.
Available now, the Biological Materials Module is resident in ChemSW’s CISPro Global and CISPro Live chemical inventory systems.
To find out more about how CISPro can meet your chemical inventory challenges, contact us today and we will be glad to send you more information and schedule a time for an free online demonstration.
You can contact us at 707-864-0845 or info@chemsw.com
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