CELLine™ Flasks, invented and manufactured by Wilson Wolf, allow high density cell culture in a format that is as easy to use as traditional flasks. High density cell culture is an extremely cost effective way of collecting cell secreted products or minimizing the use of exogenous growth factors such as serum. CELLine™ Flasks are highly efficient devices for the production of monoclonal antibody, recombinant protein, exosomes, and the like. Because CELLine™ Flasks are so cost effective and easy to use, they are used in most hybridoma core labs on a worldwide basis.
CELLine™ Flasks are designed for non adherent cells and CELLine™ AD Flasks are designed for adherent cells.
Unlike any other devices designed for high density cell culture, CELLine™ Flasks do not need any special equipment. Furthermore, they are as easy to use as a traditional flask. ..
The superior design is attained by separating the top and bottom of the flask with a 10,000 MWCO dialysis membrane and fabricating the bottom of the flask with a gas permeable silicone membrane. This creates a Cell Compartment, which resides below a Medium Compartment. The bottom of the Cell Compartment is formed of the gas permeable silicone membrane, while the top of the Cell Compartment is formed by the dialysis membrane. When cells are placed in the Cell Compartment, they settle on the gas permeable membrane where they have unrestricted access to ambient oxygen no matter how much medium resides above them. The Medium Compartment resides above the Cell Compartment and can hold a large volume of medium, allowing reduced feeding frequency.
The key to high density is attained by making the distance between the gas permeable membrane and the dialysis membrane very small. Since cells, cell secreted products, and most exogenous growth factors exceed the size of particles that can move through the dialysis membrane, they remain trapped in the small volume of medium residing in the Cell Compartment. By making the Medium Compartment large in volume, a large source of substrates such as glucose can move into the Cell Compartment and a large amount of waste products such as lactate can be absorbed into the Medium Compartment. Meanwhile, cells and cell secreted products remain trapped in the Cell Compartment, where the cells are in optimal position for gas exchange.
In the case of serum based cultures, hybridomas, CHO’s, BHK’s, and other cell types thrive when serum is only present in the Cell Compartment medium. Serum does not need to be in the Medium Compartment medium. Thus, a substantial cost reduction in serum is attained. For example, in a CELLine CL1000, when only two ml of serum resides in 15 ml of medium in the Cell Compartment, and 1000 ml of medium without any serum resides in the Medium Compartment, cells grow just as they would in a flask at 10% serum. Thus, despite the CELLine CL1000 holding about 1000ml of medium, only 2ml is serum. That means 100ml of serum is saved relative to traditional flask culture every time the medium of the Medium Compartment is exchanged.
The concentration of cell secreted products is substantial. For example, a hybridoma culture in which 20 µg/ml of mab is present in a standard flask will typically reach a density of between 1 and 2 mg/ml in the Cell Compartment of the CELLine™ Flask. In this manner, downstream processing is greatly simplified.
The CELLine™ Flask is an excellent choice in a variety of applications including monoclonal antibody production, recombinant protein production, exosome production, or any application in which reducing the use (and cost) of exogenous growth factors is desired. ..
