We make bioreactor monitoring easier by introducing our cost-effective measurement system based on MIR spectroscopy. It allows to measure glucose and lactate online without any contamination risk. Further parameters such as glutamine and ammonium are planned.
The use of mid-infrared (MIR) spectroscopy for online measurement of glucose and lactate in mammalian cell cultures has already been demonstrated in recent studies. (Sandor et al., 2013; Wu et al., 2015) Drawbacks are high equipment costs and low robustness of the ATR probes which are currently used.
We enable this method by integrating a silicon ATR crystal into a disposable flow-through cell. The spectrometer unit is reusable.
Online monitoring is possible by connecting the system to the bioreactor with a loop (fed-batch) or integrating it into the perfusion stream. This eliminates the need for expensive and sensitive IR fiber optics including expensive ATR diamond prisms.
At the same time the robustness increases and the use in single use bioprocessing becomes possible.
