For many years, pass-through devices have been used to move material from a dirty area through a barrier into a clean area. Traditional pass-through devices consist of a sealed chamber installed into a standard wall between rooms, whose doors are interlocked. This prevents both doors from being opened simultaneously, minimizing the spread of contamination between rooms. These traditional types of pass-throughs prevent many limiting factors in terms of function and efficiency. The requirement of hands to access the pass-through and the inability to maintain sterility at all times inside the pass-through are just two of these limiting factors.

As the number and size of animal research facilities have increased in recent years, so has the demand to move large volumes of animals and materials through barriers into clean facilities. With this increased activity, the need to improve the efficiency of personnel handling the materials and the overall effectiveness of the barrier itself has become a critical factor. The concept of incorporating a dual access Class II Biosafety Cabinet as pass-through into the barrier was developed in the late 90’/early 00’s to address this specific need.

The use of Class II, Dual Access Biosafety Cabinet, as a room pass-through offers two distinct advantages.

1. The dual access BSC Provides both personnel and product protection from either side of the cabinet (i.e., clean or dirty) through the laminar flow of the HEPA-filtred air inside the work zone and through the air barriers that are created along with both open accesses of the cabinet.
2. The dual access concept offers greater flexibility for joint material movement through and around the cabinet. No hands are required to access the pass-through, and personnel can work as a team on both sides of the cabinet at the same time to move animals and materials efficiently.

Typically “dirty” materials, shipping boxes containing animals, bags of food, and more must be brought into a “clean” room or through the barrier into the clean area where they are decontaminated. The animals and materials are then removed and transferred into sterile containers. The use of a dual access BSC as a pass-through permits a transfer to take place in the barrier itself and allows shipping materials and packaging to be pulled back into the dirty side without passing through into the clean area. Material handling is done much more efficiently, and when done under Class II conditions inside the cabinet, it minimizes the transfer of potential contaminants into the clean facility.