Insect cell cultures offer potential advantages over mammalian cell cultures for production of proteins from recombinant DNA. They also offer advantages over the use of larvae for the production of viral insecticides. Efficient large scale process strategies to exploit these potentials need to be developed. Two key barriers are an inadequate understanding of how cellular growth and viral reproductive mechanisms respond to changes in culture conditions, and an inability to translate such knowledge into the design and operation of easily scalable bioreactors. An integrated research effort is proposed to reduce these barriers. Fluid dynamic and kinetic models are also to be developed and verified.
