The purpose of the research is to develop a cell-culture growth chamber for anchorage-dependent cells that is capable of achieving high cell densities and can be easily scaled up. Such a chamber can be used for the economical production of a number of important therapeutic and diagnostic substances that cannot be produced from animal tissue or bacterial systems. The culture chamber will be designed so that there is a transverse flow of culture medium across a packed bed of microcarriers with attached cells. A unique design, based on radial flow dynamics, should minimize the nonoptimal culture-perfusion problems that are characteristic of other large-scale culture methods and should maximize the uniformity of medium delivery and cell viability.Because anchorage-dependent cells are becoming increasingly important for the production of valuable biomolecules, and because the competitive cell-growth technologies that exist suffer from a number of pitfalls, there appears to be considerable application for this research.National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS)
