These are cells that are popular for virus production in manufacturing vaccines. They are recognized by the World Health Organization. Also commonly known as Africa green monkey kidney cells. They have a long history of successful and safe proliferation in different vessel types. These vessels include micro carriers, flasks and cell factories in bioreactors.
They are adherent cells that must be supported. This is to ensure productivity and good growth.
Blood-free Virus Production Media for Vero Cells
Here we focus on the importance of blood-free virus production in vero cells. Initially, the robust vero media used to include animal-derived or serum components. But currently, the vaccine industry has moved towards a serum-free media for vaccine production and vero cell culture.
Using serum-free media reduces the risk of contamination with streamlines regulatory documentation and adventitious agents. This increases the consistency in culture. They also use high concentration of plant-filled hydrolysates. This is used to compensate for the removal of serum.
It is however challenging with plant-filled hydrolysates difficult to identify which components are beneficial to the vero cell line. It is hard to optimize media components and attain chemical definition. This chemical also contains variable performance.
Additional benefits of doing away with undefined components include;
- Providing opportunities for potency improvement.
- They are a rich source of intellectual property.
- You will understand better the media components.
- Knowing and understanding how the final product functions.
Blood-free media development
OptiVERO is used for virus production in vero cells. Blood-free media helps in streamlining the process of regulatory. This is achieved by eliminating the documentation while including animal-derived components.
The correlation between viral vaccines and vero cells
Vero cells are only limited to vaccine production. They do not contain antiviral protein interferon because of the genetic defects. On the other hand, viral vaccines are used in preventing various types of diseases. Some of these diseases include influenza, small pox and rabies.
The vero cells are also used in the development of whole virus vaccines that have been inactivated. They are also used as substrates in production of vaccines. The cost for these vaccines is still a major challenge worldwide.
Advantages of vero cells
Vero cells have the following benefits;
- They have stable genetic characteristics
- Have a low probability of malignancy
- Contain high virus titers.
- Resistant to different cultural conditions.
- The cell bank is easy to preserve and establish
- They are sensitive to different types of viruses.
- They grow perfectly on the surface of a micro carrier.
- Their requirements are not that high.
It is important to note that vero cells are paramount in development of various vaccines.
Closure
Producing vaccines using vero cells has enhanced the controllability and safety of product quality. It’s main focus is on development and production of viral vaccines. It is our hope that may be vero cells can be used to produce a vaccine that can prevent Covid-19 which is a global enemy.
It could be the cure that the whole world has been waiting for.
