Pall Life Sciences offers a variety of regulatory-friendly animal protein-free (APF) SoloHill^® microcarriers that can be quickly and easily optimized for use in vaccine production platforms. Our application note describes dengue virus production in Vero, optimizing cell culture seeding densities and microcarrier working concentrations for efficient cell attachment and growth in two different cell culture media platforms: a traditional serum supplemented formulation and a commercially available serum-free formulation (SFM).

Overall, the results of this study demonstrates that Pall APF microcarriers are particularly effective for efficient Vero cell growth and production of dengue virus in both serum-containing and serum-free cell culture media (SFM). The results establish that SoloHill microcarriers can be used to expand and harvest Vero cells in SFM and Dulbecco’s Modified Eagle Medium—both media support excellent viral production in stirred-tank cultures.

The data presented show that wild-type and attenuated dengue viruses were expressed three days earlier and with higher overall titers in microcarrier cultures when compare to flatware. This platform and the work described facilitate APF conditions and microcarrier cultures for virus production that require little effort toward process optimization. Furthermore, this study provides a basis for evaluating the expression of other viruses that require Vero or other adherent mammalian cell lines used for the production of human vaccines.