Vero Perfusion, Packed-Bed Vessels Intensify Vaccine Production

By Xiaofeng (Kevin) Han, Ph.D., Ulrike Becken, Dr.rer.nat., and Ma Sha, Ph.D.

Strong demand for vaccines for viral diseases requires that manufacturing techniques become more productive, including those based on scalable bioreactor cell culture systems. In viral vaccine production, Vero is one of the most widely used cell lines.¹ Because these cells are anchorage dependent, they require a growth support when they are cultivated in stirred-tank bioreactors. For high-density Vero cell culture processes, an attachment matrix incorporating Fibra-Cel^® disks shows promise.

The disks are made of polyester and polypropylene fibers, which provide a threedimensional environment, offering a high surface-to-volume ratio and protecting cells from damaging shear forces. In combination with a basket impeller, a packed-bed bioreactor system is formed, which enables the exchange of growth medium and harvest of the end product in perfusion processes, without the need for cell filtration.

In this study, we cultivated Vero cells in perfusion mode in Eppendorf BioBLU^® 5p Single-Use Vessels with a built-in basket impeller prepacked with Fibra-Cel (Figure 1). We achieved a high cell density of approximately 43 million cells/mL, demonstrating great potential for Vero cell–based vaccine production using Fibra-Cel packed-bed vessels