In the past five years, Pall’s iCELLis bioreactors have emerged as the leading bioreactor technology for clinical manufacturing of viral vectors and vaccines. Pall and InVitria have previously demonstrated the successful implementation of OptiPEAK HEK293T blood-free media formulation in the iCELLis bioreactor, including rapid and uniform cell attachment to the iCELLis fixed-bed bioreactor and robust cell expansion kinetics found to be equivalent to those observed in serum-containing media. However, a major challenge in assessing cell growth is accurately and reproducibly measuring cell density. One legacy method is nuclei counting, but this method can have up to 20% variability, requires open aseptic bioreactor handling, and only provides a discrete set of data points. Another method is metabolic analysis, such as glucose consumption and lactate generation. While these measurements are less variable and can be performed sterilely, they are also discrete, and extremely sensitive to culture conditions. The Aber Futura Biomass Probe provides a third method to measure cell density, one that provides an accurate, continuous reading, while maintain sterility. In this poster, we demonstrate the implementation of the biomass probe to accurately and reproducibly count HEK293T cells, overcoming past implementation challenges, such as the interfering effect of transient air bubbles. Finally, we correlate the biomass measurements with legacy nuclei counting and glucose consumption methods.

Implementation of the Aber Futura Biomass probe in Pall’s iCELLis® nano bioreactor provides a robust and reproducible method to assess cell density

ACS Fall 2020 Virtual Meeting

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.