Comparison of Partial Least Square, Artificial Neural Network and Support Vector Regressions for real time monitoring of CHO cell culture processes using in situ Near Infrared spectroscopy.

The biopharmaceutical industry must guarantee the efficiency and biosafety of biological medicines, which are quite sensitive to cell culture process variability. Real time monitoring procedures based on vibrational spectroscopy such as NIR spectroscopy, are then emerging to support innovative strategies for retro-control of key parameters as substrates and by-product concentration. Whereas monitoring models are mainly constructed using Partial Least Squares Regression (PLSR), spectroscopic models based on Artificial Neural Networks (ANNR) and Support Vector Regression (SVR) are emerging with promising results. Unfortunately, analysis of their performance in cell culture monitoring has been limited. This work was then focused to assess their performance and suitability for the cell culture process challenges. PLSR had inferior values of the determination coefficient (R2 ) for all the monitored parameters (i.e., 0.85, 0.93, 0.98 respectively for the PLSR, SVR, and ANNR models for glucose). In general, PLSR had a limited performance while models based on ANNR and SVR have been shown superior due to better management of inter-batch heterogeneity and enhanced specificity. Overall, the use of SVR and ANNR for the generation of calibration models enhanced the potential of NIR spectroscopy as a monitoring tool. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.