Natural Killer Cell Expansion And Scale-Up In Vertical-Wheel Bioreactors

Natural Killer (NK) cells are lymphocytes that can target and destroy tumor cells and pathogens without prior sensitization. Allogeneic NK cell therapy holds promise in immunotherapy, particularly for cancer treatment. However, traditional expansion platforms lack the scalability required for rapid progression from early process development to commercial-scale manufacturing.

Scale-out models, often used for autologous therapy, increase batch-to-batch variability, reduce cost-effectiveness, and add complexity to process validations, ultimately delaying progress and hindering cell therapies from reaching patients. Vertical-wheel bioreactors address this need by enabling cell expansion in volumes ranging from 60mL to 80L. This allows for testing, optimizing, and translating multiple process parameters into larger-scale systems, ultimately enabling the expansion of a high cell yield of functional NK cells required for therapeutic dosage.

To learn more about the study, including materials, methods, results, and discussions, download the full application note.