Improve Adherent Cells On Microcarriers With Air-Wheel Bioreactors

Microcarriers have played an important role in cell culture for the last 40 years. A number of obstacles have prevented their broader and more efficient adoption in large-scale bioprocessing of cells. One major issue affecting microcarrier cultures stems from mechanical shear forces in standard stirred-tank bioreactors; these forces hinder the attachment of cells to microcarriers, and lead to microcarrier collisions and cell damage.

Because PBS Biotech’s Air-Wheel, single-use bioreactors produce much lower shearing forces, the technology is improving the culture of adherent cell lines in bioreactors. We show the advantage of the low shear mixing of PBS Biotech® bioreactors on cell attachment and growth in a comparative study against a 200 mL traditional stirred bioreactor.

Experiment
Human alveolar adenocarcinoma (A549) cells were cultured on Cytodex-1 microcarriers for up to 150 hrs in a 200 mL standard stirred-tank bioreactor and a PBS Biotech 3L bioreactor. Invitrogen FK12 medium supplemented
with 10% FBS was used. At 50 hours post-seeding the microcarriers were infected with an oncolytic adenovirus. Kinetics of attachment were followed for 0, 2, 6, 12 and 24 hours post-inoculation.