Fixed bed porous glass sphere (porosphere) bioreactors for animal cells

Process intensity of fixed bed glass sphere culture systems is increased considerably by replacing solid glass spheres with open pore glass spheres. This technique demonstrates the possibility of having a system capable of both volumetric and cell density scale up and being suitable for substrate attached and suspension cells. The yields achieved for a number of attached cell lines (approximately 10(7)/ml) demonstrate an increase approaching one order of magnitude over solid glass spheres (approximately 10(6)/ml). Also suspension cells were successfully entrapped in the open pore structure with similar yields.