EXPERIMENTAL AND COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMICS STUDY OF MICROCARRIER SUSPENSION DURING THE CULTIVATION OF MESENCHYMAL STEM CELLS IN AN AMBR250 BIOREACTOR

摘要

The ambr250 unit is a fully automated disposable 100-250 ml bioreactor for R&D that has been developed by TAP Biosystems, now part of Sartorius-Stedim, widely used for scale down and scale up modelling studies. Recently, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have become strong candidates for cell-based therapies based on in vitro growth on microcarriers in stirred bioreactors. However, to fully realize the MSCs potential, a number of key processing issues need to be addressed because of the huge number of cells that are required. Thus, the fluid dynamics characteristics of the stirred ambr250 bioreactor must be sufficiently well understood to enable scale-up to larger bioreactors to be efficiently accomplished particularly because of the special issues arising from the presence of the particulate solid phase.