Author Archives: Rich Mirro

An Update on the Advantages of Fibra-Cel® Disks for Cell Culture

          With a renewed acceptance of perfusion processesin cell in culture, both in the laboratory and for production applications (1), New Brunswick packed-bed bioreactors using Fibra-Cel® disks are seeing an upsurge in interest. This article examines Fibra-Cel technology and its many advantages, from increased yields of secreted proteins to labor savings in applications ranging from rabies vaccine production to production of the first licensed gene therapy drug.   What Is Fibra-Cel?   Fibra-Cel from New Brunswick…

Linear Scale-Up of Cell Cultures

    Reusable bioreactors have been the benchmark standard for many decades, during which a large knowledge base on process control and scale-up has been developed. However, single-use bioreactors are increasingly being implemented in modern bioindustrial upstream processes. Many of these bioreactors deviate from the traditional stirred-tank design, but a number of companies have expressed a strong need for single-use bioreactors based on the strirred-tank design. A traditional stirred-tank design would enable users to optimize their scale-up processes based on…

CelliGen® BLU Single-Use, 5-L and 14-L Bioreactor

          Whether you are culturing animal cells in an R&D laboratory or in a pilot production facility, your ability to precisely control all process parameters is critical. Culture yield depends on it, and should your process go into production, FDA requirements mandate it. Therefore the performance of your bioreactor’s controller is as important as a good vessel design, as an optimized medium formulation, or selection of the right cell line. This article focuses on the process…

Which Impeller Is Right for Your Cell Line?

    When growing microbes or animal cells in a stirred-tank reactor, it is critical to choose the impeller type that is best suited to your process. Select the wrong impeller, and you could make chop suey of your filamentous fungi. Pick the right impeller, and you could greatly increase yields of your fussy mammalian cultures such as Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) and Vero kidney epithelial cells. With a wide range of impeller designs to choose from, how do you…