Adaptation of a Madin-Darby canine kidney cell line to suspension growth in serum-free media and comparison of its ability to produce avian influenza virus to Vero and BHK21 cell lines.

Madin-Darby canine kidney (MDCK) cells are currently considered for influenza vaccine manufacturing. A drawback of these cells is their anchorage dependent growth, which greatly complicates process scale-up. In this paper a novel MDCK cell line (MDCK-SFS) is described that grows efficiently in suspension and retained high expression levels of both α-2,6 and α-2,3 sialic acid receptors, which bind preferably to human and avian influenza viruses, respectively.