Automated Glucose Control

By Stuart Tindal, Sebastian Ruhl, and Diana Hesse

One of the goals of mammalian upstream bioprocess development is to handover a process to clinical manufacturing that is robust, safe and in the end produces enough material to meet the studies demand. These process development teams are increasingly being asked to do more and in less time. Thus, automated feeding strategies are becoming more and more popular as a way of reducing the development efforts and as a side benefit have shown to improve process performance and product attribute consistency.

Cell cultivation's primary feed component is glucose which is used as a starting point for all growth and energy pathways within the cells. Ensuring that the cells do not have too much or too little, enables them to grow fast and maximize the product secretion. Additionally, it has been noted that an excess in glucose concentration has an effect on the glycosylation rate of secreted soluble proteins. Thus, controlling the available glucose would improve the consistency of glycosylation patterns on final products and may improve the quality.

Within this application note a stepwise example method on how to establish glucose feed control is documented. The materials and methods show how this was done using Sartorius Stedim Biotech hardware and equipment. An overview of the results and discussion of the data is given in order to highlight some of the key benefits of applying this method to other processes.