Fermentation with immobilized cell cultures.

For the production of monoclonal antibodies and complex recombinant human proteins or glycoproteins a number of immobilized cell culture systems have been developed. The advantages of such cell culture systems are that cells can be kept in small volumes of cell culture fluid and media can be changed continuously if necessary for induction of product synthesis or removal and harvest of metabolic products. Whereas the hollow fiber and the opticell culture systems can be limited in scaling up the microcarrier system, the fluidized bed bioreactor and the solid bed bioreactor are suitable for scaling up. In contrast to the other systems, the solid bed bioreactor requires no special manipulation for anchoring the cells to the wire springs. In situ cleaning is possible and the beads are reusable. With this cell culture fermentation system, production processes for interferon beta, monoclonal antibodies for interferon alfa and recombinant human tissue plasminogen activator were developed.