A single dose of mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) therapy can contain billions of cells. While traditional cell expansion methods rely on 2D planar culture systems, these manual approaches include many open-handling steps and cannot sustainably scale to meet the significant clinical cell number requirement. On the other hand, automated, closed-system 3D suspension-based processes enable seamless scale-up while reducing contamination risks, making these methods more desirable for the manufacturing of stem cell therapies. This application note describes the successful and rapid transition of an established 2D process to a 3D microcarrier-based cell expansion system, using the Sartorius MSC Pilot solution.

Download to learn about:

• Streamlining a seed train with suspension-based cell expansion
• Characterizing MSCs for phenotypic and functional therapeutically relevant CQAs  
• Accelerating process development timelines and enabling MSC scale-up