In this Q & A, three experts from both academia and industry discuss the types of cell culture they perform in their labs, technologies they use, and the challenges they face.

As Canadian scholar Marshall McLuhan famously noted, “The medium is the message.” So it is with cell culture, where media and feed or supplementation strategies have been responsible for more improvement in cell productivity and performance than any other factors.

Isolating facility and layout from equipment during planning and maintenance of a cell culture lab
entails considerable risk, if for no other reason than the latter must fit into the former.

Although cell culture is more than 100 years old, it has only been applied to the manufacture of biological drugs for about 25 years. Today mammalian cell culture is the workhorse production platform for most of biotech’s protein therapeutics and increasingly for cell- and virus-based vaccines.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of commercial thermal cyclers for the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). In brief, this technology amplifies segments of DNA.

Your cells deserve the best. Consistent growth surfaces with certified testing. Premium grade, optically clear polystyrene. ISO 9001 production and manufacturing, and rigorous quality control. 

Sukhanya Jayachandra, Ph.D., Senior Research Investigator and head of the Cellular Resource Group, Lead Discovery Profiling Compound Management at Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS), discusses her cell culture core facility.

Thanks to work at LLNL, sub-three-minute amplification of DNA and RNA via polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is now possible.

Microvolume assessment of bacterial culture growth was found to facilitate measurement of undiluted cultures. Comparison between microvolume and cuvette-based data requires the use of a conversion factor, which can be simply determined.

Ralph Garippa, Ph.D., independent consultant and former head of cell-based high-throughput screening (HTS) and microscopic imaging-based high-content screening (HCS) at Hoffmann-La Roche, discusses the recent trends in cell culture.