Preliminary modeling of the perfusion culture of mammalian cells with a spinfilter as retention device

• Main Authors: Luis Y Hernández, Abel González, Jorge Bouza, Orestes Mayo, Elena Kulich, Guido Riera
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elfos Scientiae
• Series: Biotecnología Aplicada
• Subjects: spinfilter; colmatación; flujo de perfusión
• Online Access: http://scielo.sld.cu/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1027-28522010000100004&lng=en&tlng=en

Specific equations describing the behavior of cell growth and the filtration mechanism of a perfusion culture in stirred tank fermentors at 30 L scale were derived from basic equations for mass balance and mechanical energy in a spinfilter. These equations, when used for modeling the operation process in the Matlab package together with previously reported experimental data, yielded results similar to those of culture kinetics. The operational variables with the highest influence on the process were analyzed with the Matlab module, comparing them to a basal case using the spin rate of the spinfilter and the filtration area usually employed in the production runs as comparison parameters. Two additional comparisons were also performed, using cases with different filtration areas (smaller or higher than that of the basal case) in which the stirring rate was varied to analyze the behavior of the perfusion flow capacity during the run. The influence of the filtration area on the fermentation life was corroborated, with higher values for the latter as filtration area and spin rate of the filter increased.