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The secret weapon of cell culture: Do you know what is unique about suspension culture?
In the field of biological sciences, cell culture offers endless possibilities, and suspension culture, as a form of it, is often treated with less attention. Suspension culture, where cells are grown and propagated suspended in a nutrient solution, provides researchers with a flexible way to study cell behavior and has also shown unique potential for commercial applications.
Suspension culture is a key technology in many biopharmaceutical and research applications. It allows cells to grow in larger volumes, which undoubtedly opens new doors for related industries.
Definition and history of suspension culture
Suspension culture is a type of cell culture that allows single cells or small cells to be aggregated and multiplied in agitated growth media, ultimately forming a suspension. The history of this method stems from the development of cell and tissue culture as a whole. As early as 1885, Wilhelm Roux laid the foundation for future tissue culture and developed a physiological salt buffer for maintaining living cells. With the advancement of technology, in 1910, Montrose Thomas Burrows collaborated with Alexis Carrel to successfully establish a multiplex tissue culture system that could be maintained in vitro.
Technology and maintenance of suspension culture
Suspension culture requires specific vitamin- and amino-acid-rich nutrient media, and it also needs to be within a specific cell density range to avoid cell death. Primary cells must be extracted from the sample and separated using digestive enzymes before they can be cultured in suspension. Other cells, such as white blood cells, that naturally exist in suspension are more suitable for this culture method.
Compared with adherent culture, suspension culture is generally easier to maintain. Cells can usually be suspended directly in liquid without the need to attach to a solid surface.
Laboratory maintenance of suspension cultures
There are some key maintenance differences between suspension cultures and adherent cultures in the laboratory. While both require special nutrient media, gas exchange, and sterile conditions to prevent contamination, suspension culture requires frequent stirring to avoid cell sedimentation. This means that specialized stirring devices such as spinner bottles and stirrer bottles are widely used. Not only that, these stirrings expose cells to shear forces, which may affect cell growth.
Importance of business applications
Compared to adherent culture, suspension culture is favored for its ability to grow intuitively in larger vessels, which makes it more advantageous for producing antibodies, recombinant proteins, and more. However, compared to adherent culture, mammalian cell lines cultured in suspension are relatively rare. Large-scale suspension cultures usually involve non-mammalian cells and are often performed in bioreactors.
The flexibility and efficiency of suspension culture operations make it an indispensable part of the current biomedical research and pharmaceutical industries.
The key advantages of suspension culture are its production efficiency and flexibility in cell growth, which, as many researchers say, are irreplaceable for experiments that require large numbers of cells or produce specific finished products. In this context, will suspension culture become the core of future biotechnology development?
