Abstract
Plant cell immobilization can protect plant cells from shear forces and increase the stability of gene. An additional advantage of immobilization is the easiness for performing continuous culture with cell recycling. Therefore plant cell immobilization can overcome the limitations of plant cell applications. In addition, target protein should be selected from pharmaceutical proteins to get rid of low expression level problem. The enhanced production of human granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (hGM-CSF) was investigated in immobilized Nicotiana tabacum suspension cell cultures. When the cells were immobilized in polyurethane foam, specific production of hGM-CSF was higher than that in alginate bead immobilization. Optimum continuous culture condition was the addition of 60 g/L sucrose in growth media with exchanging media every 6 day. Under the same condition, specific hGM-CSF production was 7 times higher in a 500-mL spinner flask than that in 100-mL Erlenmeyer flasks. Therefore, development of an effective immobilization process would be possible when the advantage of easy cell recycling was used. Consequently, enhanced production of target proteins could be possible in immobilized continuous cultures when the advantages of immobilization were applied.
