mold problems in cell culture - (Sep/01/2006 )

Hi, Our lab has had reoccuring problems with mold contamination over the past few months, particularly when using 10 cm plates. We cleaned our incubators with SporKlenz and started adding ClearBath to the water, but this does not seem to help. Does anybody have any other suggestions for killing mold?
Thanks!

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Moldgirl, I am not sure how helpful this would be.. I had a bad case of contamination of yeast in an important cell line of mine. It was irreplacable. So I took some drastic measures - I added antifungal agent - amphotericin B in almost 4X concentration which was lamost near the cytotoxic level and changed the media everyday till I couldn't see the yeast filaments. Then I slowly reduced the concentration of ampB and brought it down to minimal. Till that time these cells weer kept in "isolatin" to prevent spread of infection if spores had been formed. I also applied antifungal solutions to the incubator where these plates were stored; sterilized all the pipettes, tips, etc., and changed the media, trypsin and other reagents that could have come into contact with these cells.. Hope this helps.

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