Stirred culture of peripheral and cord blood hematopoietic cells offers advantages over traditional static systems for clinically relevant applications

The ability to culture hematopoietic cells in readily characterizable and scalable stirred systems, combined with the capability to utilize serum-free me- dium, will aid the development of clinically attractive bio- reactor systems for transplantation therapies. We thus examined the proliferation and differentiation character- istics of peripheral blood (PB) mononuclear cells (MNC), cord blood (CB) MNC, and PB CD34 + cells in spinner flasks and (control) T-flask cultures in both serum- containing and serum-free media. Hematopoietic cul- tures initiated from all sources examined (PB MNC, CB MNC, and PB CD34 + cells) grew well in spinner vessels with either serum-containing or serum-free medium. Culture proliferation in spinner flasks was dependent on both agitator design and RPM as well as on the estab- lishment of critical inoculum densities (ID) in both serum- containing (2 ◊ 10 5 MNC/mL) and serum-free (3 ◊ 10 5 MNC/mL) media. Spinner flask culture of PB MNC in se- rum-containing medium provided superior expansion of total cells and colony-forming cells (CFC) at high ID (1.2 ◊ 10 6 cells/mL) as compared to T-flask controls. Serum-free spinner culture was comparable, if not superior, to that observed in serum-containing medium. This is the first report of stirred culture of PB or CB MNC, as well as the first report of stirred CD34 + cell culture. Additionally, this is the first account of serum-free stirred culture of hema- topoietic cells from any source. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons,