Rapid serum‐free/suspension adaptation: Medium development using a definitive screening design for Chinese hamster ovary cells

The biopharmaceutical industry prefers to culture the mammalian cells in suspension with a serum‐free media (SFM) due to improved productivity and process consistency. However, mammalian cells preferentially grow as adherent cells in a complete medium (CM) containing serum. Therefore, cells require adaptation from adherence in CM to suspension culture in SFM. This work proposes an adaptation method that includes media supplementation during the adaption of Chinese hamster ovary cells. As a result, the adaptation was accelerated compared to the traditional repetitive subculturing. Ca2+/Mg2+ supplementation significantly reduced the doubling time compared to the adaptation without supplementation during the adaptation of adherent cells from 100% CM to 75% CM (p