In Situ Infrared Spectroscopy as a PAT Tool of Great Promise for Real-Time Monitoring of Animal Cell Culture Processes

Animal cell culture bioprocesses have become essential in pharmaceutical field for the production of recombinant therapeutic proteins, such as monoclonal antibodies. Consequently, the Process Analytical Technology approach recommends the use of in situ characterization tools, such as infrared (IR) spectroscopy, to control production processes and ensure the quality of endproducts. This review presents the current status of applying IR spectroscopy for animal cell culture processes. IR spectroscopy appears to be a very promising tool due to its flexibility, simplicity, rapidity and its inherent ability to provide simultaneous multi-analyte information with a single spectrum. Taken into account the main characteristics of animal cell bioprocesses, the advantages and challenges of IR spectroscopy applications are discussed. Then, published works underlining the interest of IR spectroscopy for animal cell bioprocesses are presented, which clearly demonstrated that IR spectroscopy is not only applicable for global supervision of process, but is also suitable for real-time monitoring of key parameters in animal cell cultures. Finally, this review also highlights some future improvement needed to strengthen IR spectroscopy as a reliable industrial PAT tool for feed-back control and process optimization, towards guaranteed end-product quality.