S164: Can lactate actually be beneficial to CHO cell culture processes?

Lactate has long been regarded as one of the key metabolites of mammalian cell cultures.  High levels of lactate have clear negative impacts on cell culture processes.  These include inhibition of growth and reduction of productivity.  In addition, higher lactate leads to higher amount of base usage, which in turn results in higher culture osmolality that could be detrimental to culture growth and viability.  A great amount of effort has been made to reduce lactate accumulation through process control, media optimization, or genetic engineering of the host cell lines.  In this presentation, however, a different aspect of lactate metabolism will be examined.  In cultures where lactate is consumed after initial accumulation, a strong correlation is often seen between lactate depletion (later in culture stage) and acceleration of viability decline and productivity plateau.  This presentation will highlight efforts to understand this phenomenon and various approaches were investigated to see if feeding lactate in these cultures can actually be beneficial.