The purpose of the research is to develop a cell culture growth chamber for anchorage-dependent cells that is capable of achieving high cell densities and which can be easily scaled-up. Such a chamber can be used for the economical production of a number of important therapeutic and diagnostic substances which cannot be produced from animal tissue or bacterial systems. The culture chamber will be designed so that there is a transverse flow of culture medium across a packed bed of microcarriers with attached cells. A unique design, based on radial flow dynamics, should minimize the non-optimal culture perfusion problems that are characteristic of other large-scale culture methods and should maximize the uniformity of medium delivery and cell viability. Since anchorage-dependent cells are becoming increasingly important for the production of valuable biomolecules, and since the competitive cell growth technologies that exist suffer from a number of pitfalls, there appears to be considerable potential for the commercial application of this research.
