Natural Killer Cell Expansion and Scale-Up in Vertical-Wheel Bioreactors

This white paper evaluates expansion and scale-up of donor-derived natural killer (NK) cells in PBS Vertical-Wheel bioreactors compared with G-Rex culture systems. Studies examined the effects of agitation rate on cell expansion and cytotoxicity while also modeling transition to larger manufacturing scales. NK cells expanded in Vertical-Wheel bioreactors demonstrated greater cumulative fold expansion and improved cytotoxic performance across all evaluated agitation rates. Additional work in PBS-3 systems achieved higher cell densities than static culture controls and generated data used to predict performance at larger production scales. The paper discusses workflow design, scale-up strategy, resource utilization, and manufacturing implications for allogeneic NK-cell therapies. Results support the feasibility of using Vertical-Wheel technology as a scalable platform for production of functional NK-cell products.