(642g) Cell Damage of Human and Industrial Cell Lines in Bioprocess Equipment

Cell damage due to hydrodynamic stress occurs in analysis devices such as Flow cytometer as well as downstream industrial equipment. Currently, we are focusing on the quantification of cell damage, based upon practitioners reported damage, of both industrially relevant cell lines and human cell lines used for research purposes.

Specifically, in this work cell sensitivity of several different human, leukemia cell lines as well as CHO cells have been investigated. The effect of hydrodynamic stress induced by sorting these cells in several different flow cytometer devices was quantified both experimentally as well as hydrodynamically using computational fluid dynamics packages.

The results indicate that not only are cells damaged in a flow cytometer, but that this damage can vary from cell line to cell line as well as specific conditions/type of flow cytometer and flow conditions in rapid contractions (the torture chamber). In addition, the sensitivity of any specific cell line can be a function of the growth phase of the cell.

Additional results will be presented oriented to understand the cell damage phenomena at molecular level. These results include expression of stress proteins and cell cycle analysis of populations exposed to critical hydrodynamic conditions.