Negatively charged microcarriers

These are made of glass or polystyrene. As glass is much denser than water, the glass beads have only a coating of glass around a polystyrene core. 

Glass-coated and plastic beads are available from Cellon (Bioglas beads), ICN (Rapid Cell G and Rapid Cell P) and Nunc (Biosilon) and do not swell in aqueous solutions. They are sterilised by autoclaving at 121° for 15 min in water. 

Because they do not swell 1 g of glass coated or plastic beads will contain only about 230,000 microcarriers of surface area 30 cm2. Bead loadings of 40 g/1 are recommended. 

The gelatin surface is a more natural growth surface than glass, plastic or positively charged molecules and this allows seeding at 

Procedures for setting up microcarrier cultures and for subculturing are given in 4.4 and 4.5. 

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Microcarriers fall into three groups (a) positively charged (b) negatively charged and (c) non-ionic. 

The most important factor in this method is the selection of a suitable microcarrier for the cells. Microcarriers are made of materials such as dextran, polyacrylamide, polystyrene cellulose, gelatin and glass. They are coated with collagen or the negative charge of dimethylaminoethyl, diethylaminopropyl and trimethyl-2-hydroxyaminopropyl groups as shown in Table 8,... 

Microporous microcarriers Biosilon Polystyrene with negative surface charge Nunclon... 

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