Metabolic-sensing characteristics of absorption-photometry for mammalian cell cultures in biopharmaceutical processes

Background: In mammalian cell culture processes, metabolite concentrations have to be routinely monitored to ensure the consistency of both process operation and product quality. The absorption photometric-based technology (APBT) has been introduced recently as a new option for characterizing metabolic profiles of the cell-culture processes. In order to understand the measurement technology, the benchmarking study was conducted under various conditions, including known standard samples and untreated cell-culture samples. Results: The standard samples, with known concentrations of the metabolites, were analyzed using APBT, and its repeatability, as well as its accuracy was compared with the other two common technologies used in the industry: membrane-based technology, and supplementary HPLC. The three technologies were further validated using the supernatant collected from batch cell-cultures from two different Chinese hamster ovary cell lines with extended culture duration, covering a broad range of exper...