Because the development of industrial cell culture processes for production of recombinant proteins seeks high efficiency, reproducibility and predictability, it is important to have access accurate analytical tools. Although established analytical methods deliver useful data, they are incomplete because they only partially address the cellular metabolic state and also because no predictions can be made.

This paper discusses the process used to establish and evaluate an assay for rapid and reliable online measurement of intracellular ATP (adenoside-5′-triphosphate) to monitor the physiological state of cells in combination with other parameters (cell number, viability, and glucose consumption).

With the increasing importance of biologics in today’s pharmaceutical market, throughput and efficiency are crucial in developing a production cell line. Cell culture automation can be a good solution for high-throughput and labor-intensive areas of a development process. Because of the cost of the investment, there are many factors to be considered before committing to a purchase.

In this paper, Tim Gryseels, a senior scientist at Pfizer, discusses the important steps in identifying and purchasing cell culture automation, and how the automation process can reduce costs and increase throughput, efficiency and consistency.