The use of polystyrene microcarriers to improve the cell yield from a human epithelial pancreatic tumour cell line

Abstract

Human pancreatic tumour cells have been successfully grown on polystyrene microcarriers, a culture system which improves the cell yield obtained from a small initiating inoculum (<1.0 x 10 6 cells), thereby offering considerable advantages over conventional monolayer culture. Cell yields from microcarrier cultures represent a 15-fold increase over the number of initial cells compared to a 3-fold increase in monolayer culture. However, the microcarrier technique depends on the exact fulfilment of several critical culture variables for each cell type which alter when the cells exhibit a variable in vitro growth rate.