Direct Seeding And Harvest Of Cryopreserved HEK293 Cells: Corning® Ascent® Fixed Bed Bioreactor System

By C. Philip Harding and Ann M. Ferrie, Corning Incorporated, Life Sciences, Kennebunk, ME USA

The Corning® Ascent® Fixed Bed Bioreactor (FBR) System can successfully cultivate human embryonic kidney (HEK293) cells, commonly used in the pharmaceutical industry. Using this system, your cells can be directly inoculated into the bioreactor from cryopreservation vials or bags, reducing scale-up time. The study found that cell attachment in the Ascent FBR system ranged from 60 to 75% within a 200-minute period. This is compared to the attachment in 2D controls, which averaged 50% after 24 hours despite 98% viability upon thaw. The automated process steps of the Ascent FBR system facilitate ease of use and consistency, shortening seed train timelines, and increasing cell yield consistency. This makes direct inoculation from cryopreserved cell banks an attractive option for experiments, seed trains, or production batches.