The scale-up of plant cell culture: Engineering considerations

Abstract

The enormous versatility of plants has continued to provide the impetus for the development of plant tissue culture as a commercial production strategy for secondary metabolites. Unfortunately problems with slow growth rates and low products yields, which are generally non-growth associated and intracellular, have made plant cell culture-based processes, with a few exceptions, economically unrealistic. Recent developments in reactor design and control, elicitor technology, molecular biology, and consumer demand for natural products, are fuelling a renaissance in plant cell culture as a production strategy. In this review we address the engineering consequences of the unique characteristics of plant cells on the scale-up of plant cell culture.

Effects of immobilization by entrapment in alginate and scale‐up on paclitaxel and baccatin III production in cell suspension cultures of Taxus baccata

“…This observation is also applicable to the case of the Wave bioreactor, in which even though the inoculum was only of 40 F 0.3 g of cells, the inoculum/culture medium relation was also 1/10. These results indicate that the improvement in product yield was mainly due to the immobilization effect, which agrees with the inverse relationship between cell growth and secondary metabolite accumulation in plant cell cultures (Taticek et al, 1991). In a study on the kinetics of growth and paclitaxel yield in cell suspension cultures of T. cuspidata, Fett-Neto et al (1994) observed that the taxane levels decreased with the enhancement of the respective cell biomass.…”

Bioreactor engineering for recombinant protein production in plant cell suspension cultures

“…Plant cells in suspension culture are derived from callus tissues and tend to form aggregates and large clumps due to the failure of the daughter cells to separate from the parent cells after division [119] and the secretion of extracellular polysaccharides may also contribute to increased cell adhesion [120]. Size distribution of aggregates is dependent on plant host species, method of inoculum preparation, cell growth stage, medium composition, bioreactor types and culture conditions.…”

Effect of aggregate size in cell cultures of Saussurea medusa on cell growth and jaceosidin production

“…There are mainly two problems with respect to the scaling up of plant cell cultures-hydrodynamic stress on the cells and an insufficient supply of nutrients (Taticek et al 1991). A sufficient nutrient supply requires high agitation and aeration, which subsequently place high hydrodynamic forces on cells.…”