Abstract
A novel, optical sensor was fixed in a new type of disposable bioreactor, Tubespin, for the on-line (real-time) monitoring of dissolved oxygen concentrations during cell culture. The cell density, viability and volumetric mass transfer coefficient were also determined to further characterize the bioreactors. The kLa value of the Tubespin at standard conditions was 24.3 h−1, while that of a spinner flask was only 2.7 h−1. The maximum cell density in the Tubespin bioreactor reached 6 × 106 cells mL−1, which was two times higher than the cell density in a spinner flask. Furthermore, the dynamic dissolved oxygen level was maintained above 90% air-saturation in the Tubespin, while the value was only 1.9% in a spinner flask. These results demonstrate the competitive advantage of using the Tubespin system over spinner flasks for process optimization and scale-down studies of oxygen transfer and cell growth.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (30873082), the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET-07-0376), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (21610709, 21610506) and the 211 Project of Jinan University.
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The authors have no conflicts of interest.
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Kui Xie, Xiao-Wei Zhang are contributed equally to this work.
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Xie, K., Zhang, XW., Huang, L. et al. On-line monitoring of oxygen in Tubespin, a novel, small-scale disposable bioreactor. Cytotechnology 63, 345–350 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10616-011-9361-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10616-011-9361-x