Overcoming Bioprocessing Bottlenecks By Combining Adherent And Suspension Systems

The cell therapy development landscape is beset with challenges linked to scaling: for many of the modalities in the pipeline today, the difficulty in establishing a production paradigm that can meet commercial demand cost-effectively and with adequate yields and quality is among the biggest barriers to furthering these drugs. Much of the optimization necessary to achieving this scale hinges on enabling cell culture that can scale up rather than out – certain cell types, though grown efficiently in adherent systems, are difficult to transition to suspension, which can limit their ultimate commercial potential, requiring more facility footprint and personnel than is often fiscally feasible for many biopharmaceutical companies.

Microcarriers, support matrices that enable the growth of adherent cells in suspension bioreactors, have the potential to simplify scale-up for challenging cell therapy applications. In a recent internal study, Waisman Biomanufacturing was able to demonstrate comparability for a new manufacturing platform combining bioreactors and microcarriers using mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs). Using bone marrow MSCs as a model system, Waisman, utilizing bioreactors in combination with Corning®️ Synthemax®️ II Microcarriers, was able to demonstrate comparable population doubling times (DT) when compared to typical adherent approaches.