Examining the sources of variability in cell culture media used for biopharmaceutical production.

Raw materials, in particular cell culture media, represent a significant source of variability to biopharmaceutical manufacturing processes that can detrimentally affect cellular growth, viability and specific productivity or alter the quality profile of the expressed therapeutic protein. The continual expansion of the biopharmaceutical industry is creating an increasing demand on the production and supply chain consistency for cell culture media, especially as companies embrace intensive continuous processing. Here, we provide a historical perspective regarding the transition from serum containing to serum-free media, the development of chemically-defined cell culture media for biopharmaceutical production using industrial scale bioprocesses and review production mechanisms for liquid and powder culture media. An overview and critique of analytical approaches used for the characterisation of cell culture media and the identification of root causes of variability are also provided, including in-depth liquid phase separations, mass spectrometry and spectroscopic methods.

Untargeted LC-MS/MS Profiling of Cell Culture Media Formulations for Evaluation of High Temperature Short Time Treatment Effects.

An untargeted LC-MS/MS platform was implemented for monitoring variations in CHO cell culture media upon exposure to high temperature short time (HTST) treatment, a commonly used viral clearance upstream strategy. Chemically defined (CD) and hydrolysate-supplemented media formulations were not visibly altered by the treatment. The absence of solute precipitation effects during media treatment and very modest shifts in pH values observed indicated sufficient compatibility of the formulations evaluated with the HTST-processing conditions. Unsupervised chemometric analysis of LC-MS/MS data, however, revealed clear separation of HTST-treated samples from untreated counterparts as observed from analysis of principal components and hierarchical clustering sample grouping. An increased presence of Maillard products in HTST-treated formulations contributed to the observed differences which included organic acids, observed particularly in chemically defined formulations, and furans, pyridines, pyrazines, and pyrrolidines which were determined in hydrolysate-supplemented formulations. The presence of Maillard products in media did not affect cell culture performance with similar growth and viability profiles observed for CHO-K1 and CHO-DP12 cells when cultured using both HTST-treated and untreated media formulations.

A new N-hydroxyethyliminodiacetic acid modified core-shell silica phase for chelation ion chromatography of alkaline earth, transition and rare earth elements.

Bare core-shell silica (1.7µm) has been modified with iminodiacetic acid functional groups via standard silane chemistry, forming a new N-hydroxyethyliminodiacetic acid (HEIDA) functionalised core-shell stationary phase. The column was applied in high-performance chelation ion chromatography and evaluated for the retention of alkaline earth, transition and heavy metal cations. The influence of nitric acid eluent concentration, addition of complexing agent dipicolinic acid, eluent pH and column temperature on the column performance was investigated. The efficiencies obtained for transition and heavy metal cations (and resultant separations) were comparable or better than those previously obtained for alternative fully porous silica based chelation stationary phases, and a similarly modified monolithic silica column, ranging from ∼15 to 56µm HETP. Increasing the ionic strength of the eluent with the addition of KNO3 (0.75M) and increasing the column temperature (70°C) facilitated the isocratic separation of a mixture of 14 lanthanides and yttrium in under 12min, with HETP averaging 18µm (7µm for Ce(III)).

Chelation ion chromatography of alkaline earth and transition metals a using monolithic silica column with bonded N-hydroxyethyliminodiacetic acid functional groups.

A commercially available porous silica monolithic column (Onyx Monolithic Si, 100 mm×4.6 mm I.D.) was 'in-column' covalently functionalised with 2-hydroxyethyliminodiacetic acid (HEIDA) groups, and applied to the simultaneous and rapid separation of alkaline earth and transition metal ions, using high-performance chelation ion chromatography (HPCIC). With a 0.3mM dipicolinic acid (DPA) containing eluent, the baseline separation of various common transition and heavy metal ions and the four alkaline earth metal ions could be achieved in under 14 min with a flow rate of just 0.8 mL/min. Detection was achieved using spectrophotometric detection at 540 nm after post-column reaction (PCR) with 4-(2-pyridylazo)-resorcinol (PAR). Significant effects from variation of eluent nature, concentration and temperature upon selectivity and retention were demonstrated with the new monolithic silica chelating phase. Under optimised conditions (0.165 M LiNO(3) eluent, pH 2.5), peak efficiencies of 54,000, 60,000 and 64,000 N/m, for Zn(2+), Mn(2+) and Cd(2+), respectively, were recorded, far exceeding that previously reported for IDA based chelation ion exchange columns.