# Mammalian cell culture processes are horrifically inefficient * Mammalian cells don’t like living in solution — they’ll die off in a few generations unless they are immortalized * Processes with mammalian cell lines are a huge industry * We don’t know what makes cell lines scale * Right now the process is to figure out how to do things in a tiny bioreactor, then put in a slightly bigger bioreactor, retune everything, and then put in a production thing and retune everything * What we would really want to do is develop a theory of cell line scaling * Instrument the crap out of bioreactors * microfluidic sensors on bioreactors to see how interventions affect cells * Microscopes * Why hasn’t anybody done this work? * [[Sartorius]] basically has a monopoly on bioreactors ### Related * [[Artificial Muscles as Linear Actuators]] * [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Mammalian+cell+culture+processes+are+horrifically+inefficient) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Mammalian+cell+culture+processes+are+horrifically+inefficient)