Introducing N-1 Perfusion To Intensify The Seed Train At A Higher Starting Density

Increase a facility’s production rate, decrease investment costs, and reduce facility footprint, ultimately reducing production costs. A high-density N-1 seed culture process can be used to improve a fed-batch process by seeding the production bioreactor at a higher starting density (1‒3). Alternatively, it can replace a larger N-1 bioreactor to seed one or more production bioreactors.

Demonstrated in this article is how to prepare this type of culture using the Xcellerex Automated Perfusion System (APS) and a 50 L capacity Xcellerex stirred-tank bioreactor. The cells cultured by perfusion, along with the cells cultured by standard batch process in N-1, were used to seed fed-batch cultures.

High cell density (179 MVC/mL) cultures from this perfusion setup did not impact growth, productivity, or product quality.