CHO Cell Cultivation In A DASbox® Mini Bioreactor System And DASGIP® Parallel Bioreactor Systems

By Anne Niehus, Robert Glaser, Tanja Holland, and Sebastian Kleebank

Cultivation of mammalian cells in controlled, stirred-tank bioreactors is used for the production of biopharmaceuticals like antibodies, hormones, and vaccines, as well as for growing cells for research, drug discovery, and cell-based therapies. In cell culture bioprocesses it is crucial to avoid contamination, especially because mammalian cell cultures grow relatively slowly, and will therefore be overgrown quickly by contaminants. The sterility of the equipment and medium must be ensured at the beginning of the process, but contamination must also be avoided during later manipulations such as inoculation, sampling, and the addition of media and liquids for feeding and pH control.

The DASGIP Parallel Bioreactor Systems and the DASbox Mini Bioreactor System for cell culture applications allow the parallel operation of up to 16 and 24 bioreactors respectively and support the use of both conventional glass and BioBLU Single-Use Vessels. Covering a working volume range of 100 mL to 3.8 L, they are valuable tools for advanced process development.

In this document, we give an overview of the DASbox Mini Bioreactor System and the DASGIP Parallel Bioreactor Systems. We describe their components and we guide the user through an entire CHO cell bioprocess run using glass or BioBLU Single-Use Vessels. The connections of the bioreactor with pumps and addition bottles are critical for building and maintaining a sterile barrier. In this protocol we present a strategy for the connection of feed lines through weldable connectors.

We have thoroughly tested the following protocol in our applications lab. It allows users to achieve quick and easy initial culture success and can serve as a starting point for further optimization.