Debottlenecking and reformulating feed media for improved CHO cell
growth and titer by data-driven and model-guided analyses
Abstract
Designing and selecting cell culture media and their feeding are a key
strategy to maximize culture performance in industrial biopharmaceutical
processes. However, mammalian cells are very sensitive to their culture
environment, requiring specific nutritional needs to grow and produce
high-quality proteins such as antibodies, depending on cell lines and
operational conditions. In this regard, previously we developed
data-driven and in-silico model-guided systematic framework to
investigate the effect of growth media on Chinese hamster ovary (CHO)
cell culture performance, allowing us to design and reformulate basal
media. To expand our exploration for media development research further,
we evaluated two chemically defined feed media, A and B, in ambr15
bioreactor runs using a monoclonal antibody-producing CHO K1 cell line.
We observed a significant impact of feed media on cell growth,
longevity, viability, productivity and toxic metabolites production.
Specifically, concentrated feed A was not sufficient to support
prolonged cell culture and high titer compared to feed B. The framework
systematically characterized the major metabolic bottlenecks in the TCA
cycle and its related amino acid transferase reactions, thereby
identifying key design components, such as asparagine, aspartate, and
glutamate, which are needed for highly productive cell cultures. Based
on our results, we subsequently reformulated the feeds by adjusting the
amounts of those amino acids and successfully validated their
effectiveness in promoting cell growth and/or titer.