Influence of stress on adherent cells

Stress is a broad term often used with animal cells. Frequently mechanical forces are meant using this term but chemical stress is also important cultivating animal cells. The chemical environment of the cell in a reactor have to be considered very carefully. The complexity of the medium requirements and the metabolic pathway cause very often growth limitations. Studying these limitations in order to find the reasons showed to be difficulty because of the complexity of the system. Nevertheless, glucose, glutamine, lactate and ammonia are found to be critical parameter as well as the osmotic pressure. The influence of mechanical forces on cell viability is of great importance when growing the cells in agitated systems. By far the greatest amount of work reported in the literature has been done on suspension cells but adherent cells also experience shear forces not only in bioreactors also in vivo. Therefore, most research has be done on endothelial cells but studies exists done on non-endothelial cells. The influence of shear forces on cell growth, morphology and productivity will be discussed as well as possibilities of making the cells more resistant.