A scalable bioreactor for the expansion of anchorage-dependent stem cells

Figure 1 - (a) Pump driven continuous perfusion 3D bioreactor. (b) The 3D bioreactor matrix. (c) Matrix cross-section (d) Assembled bioreactor. Currently, there is a lack of suitable bioreactors for the expansion of stem cells and other anchorage-dependent cells. Existing bioreactors are either limited in scalability, have a significantly different culture environment from the traditional 2D culture, or difficult to harvest single-cells suspensions. Cell manufacturing using existing bioreactors is an expensive, labor-intensive cell culture process, and typically requires a high-cost ISO 5 cleanroom environment. Southwest Research Institute® (SwRI®) has developed a novel cell expansion bioreactor to propagate cells using a 3D printed, single-use, scalable device, and a closed-loop system. SwRI’s patented bioreactor (Figure 1) features tightly packed interconnected spherical voids providing a large surface-to-volume ratio for cell proliferation under perfusion flow. The concave spherical surfaces reduce the hydrodynamic shear to less than 3×10-4 Pa, suitable for shear-sensitive anchorage-dependent cell proliferation [2]. This average shear stress in the bioreactor is much lower than the average shear stress in hollow fiber and microcarrier-based bioreactors [3, 4]. The 3D printed bioreactor is easy to scale up while maintaining the same structure. Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract