Passaging of microcarrier cultures as an alternative method for the seeding of large scale bioreactors for the production of high titre disabled infectious single cycle HSV-2 vaccine (Disc HSV)

摘要

Disabled Infectious Single Cycle (DISC) HSV-2 is presently routinely cultured in a complimentary cell line (CR2) in microcarrier cultures up to a scale of 15 L. In small- scale systems, these vessels can be set up from roller bottle cultures. It is obvious that for a production vessel of around 500 L that this is not a feasible option. Therefore, a procedure for passaging the cells from microcarrier culture to microcarrier culture must be defined. The aim of this study was to provide a suitable scaleable regime for the routine passaging of small-scale microcarrier cultures upto larger production cultures. It was important to ensure that the overall time of the production train was as short as possible and that the virus productivity was maintained post passaging into a production vessel.