The Journey To AAV Production In Suspension – Scaling-Up Your Process

By Sandra Klausing, Sartorius Xell GmbH

Adeno-associated viral vectors (AAVs) are among the most widely used vectors for gene therapy applications. A robust AAV manufacturing process relies on productive host cells, and typically HEK293 cells are the cell line of choice.

HEK293 cells are traditionally grown in adherent, monolayer cultures. Transitioning cells to suspension culture is the first step in the journey towards a scalable AAV production process.

In this application note, we demonstrate the performance of our easy protocol for the production of two AAV serotypes. We applied this procedure to an initial scale-up step from shake flasks to 2 L benchtop bioreactors, and measured both cell viability and AAV titer.