Quantification and impact of microcarrier collisions during mesenchymal stem cell culture in bioreactors

To date, bottlenecks persist concerning deep scientific understanding of how various process parameters will impact the Mesenchymal Stem Cell production. Specifically applied to microcarrier-based expansion processes of WJ-MSC’s, very little information is available to characterize the impact of microcarrier concentration on MSC growth and death rates or on critical quality attributes which may have crucial and possibly dangerous clinical impacts. As a result, the following work proposes to rationally describe the impact of particle concentration on MSC growth through a pluri-disciplinary characterization of microcarrier-microcarrier interactions in agitated conditions. In order to do so the biological and physical aspects of this work will be presented. To begin with, a quantitative approach to estimate cell growth and death kinetics caused by microcarrier-microcarrier collisions in both Erlenmeyer Flasks and Spinner Flasks is described. For this, cells were grown at various microcarrier concentrations using two microcarrier types : Cytodex-1 and Synthemax II. Complementary cultures were performed by adding various concentrations of particles with the same size and density as microcarriers in view of providing specific information on how additional particles may impact MSC growth on microcarriers. In addition, elements of MSC characterization were performed for these experiments to understand not only the impact of microcarrier-microcarrier interactions on growth but also on defined elements of cell quality. In parallel, in order to estimate the amount and intensity of microcarrier-microcarrier collisions in a specific tank geometry, experiments were performed using both the attenuation of light by Cytodex-1 microcarriers (to estimate local microcarrier concentration) and the acoustic signal which comes from particles colliding with a hydrophone (to estimate microcarrier-sensor collision frequency and intensity). These experiments provided elements to estimate the amount of particle collisions that MSC’s may perceive during specific dynamic and steady phases of cell culture in STR’s. Lastly, a bioreactor-based approach to MSC manufacturing will be presented focusing on biological aspects of how particle concentration and agitation impacts MSC growth and quality attributes. For this, various MSC cultures were performed in STRs with varying particle concentrations and agitation strategies. The MSC’s produced in these conditions were then characterized to define if certain critical quality attributes could be affected by parameters such as microcarrier concentration and/or agitation.