Tackling Allogeneic Immunotherapy’s Scale-up Bottleneck with the PBS Biotech Vertical-Wheel® Bioreactor

This white paper reviews the role of Vertical-Wheel bioreactors in addressing manufacturing challenges for allogeneic natural killer (NK) cell therapies. The document summarizes studies comparing NK-cell expansion and cytotoxicity in Vertical-Wheel bioreactors and G-Rex systems, including evaluations across multiple agitation rates and scale-up scenarios. NK-cell cultures grown in Vertical-Wheel systems achieved higher expansion and cytotoxic activity while reducing the number of vessels required to reach large-scale production targets. The paper also highlights published research in which NK cells expanded in a Vertical-Wheel bioreactor were used to generate extracellular vesicles for investigation in resistant lung cancer models. By combining manufacturing and application-focused examples, the resource examines how scalable bioreactor platforms can support development of allogeneic NK-cell therapies and NK-cell-derived EV products for cancer immunotherapy.