Microcarrier Cultures of Animal Cells

This chapter discusses the microcarrier cultures of animal cells. Microcarrier culture is a culture system in which tissue cells are grown as a monolayer on the surface of small solid particles and kept suspended in the culture medium by stirring. In this way, the characteristics of both suspension culture and monolayer culture are brought together while retaining all advantages of both culture systems. The microcarrier culture offers in the same way as the suspension culture better possibilities for measurement and control of the environmental conditions, such as, temperature, pH, CO2, and O2 tension, than the nonhomogeneous monolayer culture. Homogeneous culture systems also facilitate the mass cultivation of cells and reduce the risk of contamination by decreasing the number of manipulations. In contradiction to the suspension culture, microcarrier culture can be used for the homogeneous cultivation of primary cells and diploid cell strains. Microcarrier cultures of cell lines and diploid cell strains are started with cells obtained from monolayer cultures. Microcarrier culture offers the possibility to study the optimal conditions for cell growth and virus propagation and also for the large-scale production of cell and virus products.