A self-feeding roller bottle for continuous cell culture.

The concept of a self-feeding roller bottle that delivers a continuous supply of fresh media to cells in culture, which is mechanically simplistic and works with existing roller apparatuses, is presented here. A conventional roller bottle is partitioned into two chambers; one chamber contains the fresh culture media reservoir, and the other contains the cell culture chamber. A spiroid of tubing inside the fresh media reservoir acts as a pump when the bottle rotates on its horizontal axis, continuously delivering fresh media through an opening in the partition to the cell culture chamber. The modified bottle proved capable of maintaining steady-state cell densities of a hybridoma cell line over the 10-day period tested, although at lower densities than reached during batch operation due to the continuous volume dilution. Steady-state density proved to be controllable by adjusting the perfusion rate, which changes with the rotation rate of the bottle. Specific antibody production rate is as much as 3.7 times the rate in conventional roller bottles operating with intermittent batch feeding.