Scale-up Benchtop Cell Cultures Using HYPER Technology | Corning

Much has been written about scaling up cell culture for bioprocessing and other applications that require a very high density of cells. But what about the research lab where incubators are sometimes bulging with T-175 flasks?

Although the T-175, and its other sized siblings, are tried-and-true workhorses of the cell culture bench, they offer limited options when you want to scale-up.* In most cases, researchers will increase the number of flasks they seed, which results in more handling, more processing time, and the need for more incubator space.

Which is what makes the Corning High Yielding Performance Cell Culture Vessel (Corning^® HYPERFlask^®) cell culture vessel such an innovative solution. Using a proprietary multi-layered gas permeable growing surface to provide efficient gas exchange, Corning HYPERFlask vessels offer 10 times the growth area (1,720 cm²) while taking up the same incubator space as a 175 cm² flask.

Cells attach and grow on the gas permeable material with gas exchange occurring through the film layer. All fluid manipulations occur through the single neck, which is contiguous with all the layers.

In addition, Corning HYPERFlask vessels utilize the same gas permeable growing surface as Corning HYPERStack^® cell culture vessels, which provide cell growth areas from 6,000 cm² (12-stack) to 18,000 cm² (36-stack) in a compact footprint. This makes the HYPER family a reliable scale-up path from research to bioprocessing.

In their Phase I trial, researchers at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute’s Cell Manufacturing Facility dosed freshly cultured allogeneic bone marrow-derived MSCs into patients with septic shock.¹ A single dose was manufactured using the Corning HYPERFlask on an as-needed basis. Since dosing was developed on an emergent per-patient basis, researchers were notified of a patient enrollment and had to deliver the dose within 6 hours.

When larger-phase clinical trials were needed to determine true clinical impact, researchers needed to be able to work within the same isolator units, following the same protocol, with successful, reproducible cell culture on a much larger scale.