What are your thoughts on adherent vs. suspension for lentiviral manufacturing?

Answer

Certainly, growing cells in adherent cultures has many limitations, mainly around the scalability of such systems, as all rely on surface area of the culture matrix. Therefore, only a scale-out process can be performed to get to larger and larger scales, requiring larger production space, equipment, etc. Another liability of adherent system is the use of undefined mediums and use of animal serum/components to grow the cells. These reagent have the increase chance of introducing adventitious agents into the product and workflow.  Suspension growth processes are a true “scale up “ process that can take advantage of the growth of cells in various scale bioreactor system, allowing the production process to mirror the production processes established by monoclonal antibody industry. The cells can also be grown in animal component free and chemically defined media which will reduce the chance of introduction of a contaminant.