Animal Cell Pilot Plant - Resources

The BRI Animal Cell Pilot Plant Facility team of engineers and scientists offers a broad range of expertise, which allowed over the last 10 years to successfully scale-up insect cells, mammalian cells and human cell lines processes. The extensive know-how in development of control strategies for animal cell culture processes using novel monitoring tools provides a smooth transition between the bench-scale process optimization and production up to 100-L scale. Whether the request is to develop a new process or to closely mimic an existing process, the flexibility of the equipment and the versatility of the people operating this facility provide customized solution to each client.

Equipment and facilities
The BRI Animal Cell Pilot Plant Facility consist in a 345 sq. ft. cell culture suite from 3-L to 100-L (batch and fed-batch), a 325 sq. ft. perfusion suite from 3-L to 20-L, and an 1100 sq. ft. 'Containment Level 2 Large Scale' area including several segregated suites for medium preparation, seed preparation, production (20-L to 100-L; batch fed-batch and perfusion) and bioproduct purification. Each bioreactor cell culture room is equipped with required peripherals and independently supported by the FIX³² MMI SCADA system (Intellution).

Cell culture equipment:

• 4 bench-top bioreactor systems accepting vessels from 3-L to 20-L available for both process optimization or as seeding vessels
• 2 intermediate scale bioreactor systems (40-L Maximum Working Volume)
• 2 pilot scale bioreactor systems (100-L and 150-L Maximum Working Volume)
• Specialized on-line monitoring tools:
  • Biomass sensor (capacitance and optical density)
  • Dissolved CO₂ sensor
  • Exhaust gas CO₂ analyzers
  • Fluorescence sensors for GFP

Cell separation devices:

• 3 continuous centrifugation system (2 Centritech Lab unit with a maximum throughput of 20-L/h to 30-L/h [Sorvall] and 1 Centritech Cell unit with a maximum throughput of 100-L/h [Sorvall])
• 2 Vortex-Flow Filtration systems (1 BenchMark unit, 0.4 sq.ft. and 1 Pacesetter unit, 2.5 sq.ft. [Membrex])
• 5 BioSep acoustic filtration unit (2 small-scale unit of 10-L/d and 20-L, 2 intermediate unit of 30-L/d and 50-L/d and 1 pilot scale unit of 200-L/d [SonoSep, Applikon])

Product concentration unit:

• 1 continuous Ultracentrifugation system with a maximum throughput of 9-L/h (TCF-32, Sorvall)
• 1 Pellicon Tangential Flow Filtration Unit with a maximum filtration surface of 20 sq. ft.

Cell Banks storage:

• 1 GMP validated mechanical cryogenic freezer (-152^°C, Sanyo) for storage of Working Cell Banks (WCB)