Hollow fibre cell culture : compact, efficient, productive

Stylized schematic showing 3 fibres only

Continuous culture of up to 1e10 cells in a standard incubator
A hollow fibre bioreactor (HFBR) provides a huge surface area for cell attachment in a low volume cartridge. The porous semi-permeable fibre walls have a molecular weight cutoff to retain both cells and cell-secreted products.
Cells are typically inoculated into the space around the fibres. Media recirculating on the luminal side not only provides the cells with nutrients and oxygen but simultaneously removes waste metabolites resulting in stable high density culture: cell numbers can reach as high as 2 billion in a scaleable 20ml bioreactor.
Repeated collections of concentrated cell-secreted products
Multiple harvests of supernatant enriched in target product can be taken over many weeks. This is a proven system for generating significant amounts of concentrated EVs/exosomes, mAbs or recombinant proteins.
Using this approach any R&D lab can consider generating up to industrial scale quantities of their target product.

Efficient scale up of cell culture
Highly concentrated secreted product
Avoids passaging cells
Biologically relevant 3-dimensional culture conditions
No shear stress on cells
Optimal for high fidelity protein expression
Reduces plasticware trash
Uses an economical chemically-defined media formulation
Suitable for suspension and anchorage-dependent cells
How to harvest from a FiberCell cartridge?
Harvesting is carried out in the laminar flow cabinet (it is very easy to unclip the cartridge with its media reservoir from the Duet pump which stays in the incubator at all times). Using syringes, product-enriched supernatant can be periodically collected. The molecular weight cut-off of the hollow fibres traps and concentrates secreted products to give very high yields.

Simple disposable cartridge module

Further scale-up is easy

