A Seg-Flow® automated nutrient monitoring and continuous feed platform for precise nutrient feed control

Fed-batch culture processes are commonly used for the production of various biotherapeutic and other industrial commodities.  A widely employed nutrient feed control strategy for both cell culture and microbial fermentation processes is direct feedback control, in which the nutrient feed is directly controlled by the nutrient, i.e., glucose, concentration.  However, various iterations of this feeding approach exist which may not be conducive to culture growth and productivity.  In order to optimize culture performance, the means by which the substrate is fed to the culture is just as, if not more, important as maintaining the desired media substrate levels.  An automated feedback control platform, which employs a continuous feed strategy based on the culture’s real-time nutrient consumption rate, has been developed by Flownamics®.  This integrated platform consists of the Seg-Flow® automated on-line sampling system, a nutrient analyzer and a feed pump.   The Seg-Flow system was evaluated for its ability to precisely control media glucose concentrations in both low and high consumption rate culture simulation models.  The results showed that the integrated Seg-Flow system was able to precisely control media glucose concentrations at the prescribed levels through real-time glucose consumption rate calculation and continuous feeding.