UniVessel® Single Use Bioreactor For CHO Fed-Batch Cultures

By Adiba Zanghi, Debora Lin, Tina Balsara, Lucian Young, Barry Wolf and Ping Huang BioProcess Development, Abbvie Biotherapeutics, Inc.

The motivation for utilizing single use (SU) bioreactors is the reduced turn-around time and labor required for cleaning and autoclaving traditional glass vessels as well as the associated costs for maintenance and repair.  Sartorius’ 2L UniVessel^® SU has an option for an external water jacket system controlled by Sartorius’ BIOSTAT^® controllers. In this study, we determined the feasibility of the UniVessel^® SU and BIOSTAT^® B-DCU II combination by performing detailed comparability studies of cell growth, viability, monoclonal antibody (mAb) productivity and product quality attributes (aggregation, charge variation and glycosylation) using three recombinant CHO cell lines. Comparability was also examined based on power input and agitation. Data show that after optimizing process parameters, the UniVessel^® SU with water jacket performed comparably to a jacketed 2L Applikon glass bioreactor.