Continuous Animal Cell Perfusion Processes: The First Step Toward Integrated Continuous Biomanufacturing

Innovations in the biomanufacturing industry are usually incremental, but sometimes existing technologies reach their limits and additional constraints are imposed by market forces or regulatory bodies, enabling occasional major technological shifts. This chapter focuses on perfusion cell culture processes for the production of recombinant therapeutic proteins. Since the development of an efficient continuous high-cell-density cultivation platform is strongly linked to developments in correlated areas, after a section on basic aspects of perfusion processes, issues such as cell banking, seed train development, culture media, cultivation conditions, cell retention devices, and integration with downstream operations are discussed. There are still many challenges to face, but the path to the technological shift toward continuous biomanufacturing is being currently paved.