Simple and efficient control of CHO cell cultures

Cell cultures must tightly be kept under control in order to guarantee a sufficiently small variability in the protein product quality. A simple and efficient technique for CHO-cell cultures is presented that allows keeping the viable cell count Xv and the specific growth rate μ of the cells on predefined trajectories. As Xv and μ cannot directly be measured online, they are controlled indirectly via the total mass of oxygen consumed. Online values of the latter can precisely be estimated from off gas analysis, i.e. from the O2 volume ratio measured in the vent line and air flow rate measurements. In glutamine-limited fed-batch cultivations, the glutamine feed rate can be manipulated in such a way that the viable cell density and the specific growth rate are kept on predefined profiles for nearly the entire cultivation time. The viability of the cells is not affected by the closed loop control actions. The technique was validated with CHO-cells cultured in a 2.5-L fully instrumented stirred tank bioreactor. It is shown that the controller is able to run the process exactly on predefined tracks with a high batch-to-batch reproducibility. By means of six fed-batch cultivations of CHO cells it was shown that a remarkable reproducibility of viable cell concentration could be achieved throughout 140 h cultivation time.