Scaling-Up Adherent Stem Cell Cultures: Importance Of Physioenvironmental Control By Multiplate Bioreactor

Single-use bioreactors minimize manual handling, realizing economies of scale and delivering the benefits of a closed system for stem-cell-based products. Nevertheless, process development and scale-up may be challenging as small variations in physicochemical parameters, such as surface characteristics, pH and dissolved oxygen, can heavily impact stem cell growth and behavior. Preserving the cell culture environment and mitigating risk during process scale-up is critical.

Integrity™ Xpansion™ 2-D multiplate bioreactors have been specially designed and engineered to enable easy and effective transfer from existing T-flask or multytray stack processes by offering the same cell growth environment and enabling control of the critical cell culture parameters. Xpansion bioreactors are made up of stacked polystyrene plates within a closed system. Up to 180 plates offer a surface area of 11m2 with a working volume of 19.8L. Their compact, efficient designs enable an automatically-controlled aeration system which provides advanced gas diffusion to control the growth environment to user-defined optimum values of pH and dissolved oxygen (D.O.).

The data highlights the impact of multiplate design and control of pH and D.O. on process scalability for adherent stem cell culture.