On-line prediction of the glucose concentration of CHO cell cultivations by NIR and Raman spectroscopy: Comparative scalability test with a shake flask model system

Abstract In this study, near-infrared (NIR) and Raman spectroscopy were compared in parallel to predict the glucose concentration of Chinese hamster ovary cell cultivations. A shake flask model system was used to quickly generate spectra similar to bioreactor cultivations therefore accelerating the development of a working model prior to actual cultivations. Automated variable selection and several pre-processing methods were tested iteratively during model development using spectra from six shake flask cultivations. The target was to achieve the lowest error of prediction for the glucose concentration in two independent shake flasks. The best model was then used to test the scalability of the two techniques by predicting spectra of a 10 l and a 100 l scale bioreactor cultivation. The NIR spectroscopy based model could follow the trend of the glucose concentration but it was not sufficiently accurate for bioreactor monitoring. On the other hand, the Raman spectroscopy based model predicted the concentration of glucose in both cultivation scales sufficiently accurately with an error around 4 mM (0.72 g/l), that is satisfactory for the on-line bioreactor monitoring purposes of the biopharma industry. Therefore, the shake flask model system was proven to be suitable for scalable spectroscopic model development.