Fixed bed bioreactor with three dimensional cell uniformity and related methods

Abstract

A cell culture bioreactor system is provided with a cell culture vessel having an interior volume capable of perfusing liquid media therethrough, an inlet fluidly connected to the interior volume, and an outlet fluidly connected to the interior volume. A cell culture bed disposed in the interior volume includes a substrate for adhering cells thereto. The bioreactor system can seed cells onto the substrate and culture the seeded cells while achieving a uniform cell distribution through the cell culture bed during the cell culture. The uniform cell distribution is characterized by a normalized variance of a concentration of cells in any sub-volume of a predetermined sub-volume size within the interior volume, the normalized variance being less than or equal to 0.5.

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