A challenge in CHO cell culture process development lies in formulating optimal media to fulfill the various nutritional requirements of cell cultures. Due to the potential for diversity between CHO cell lines, media development is a continuous process of optimization which involves component adjustments, blending and testing new formulations, and analyzing the metabolic pathways of the cells. Given DOE tools and a large set of components and formulations, the process development engineer is often faced with the dilemma of choosing between testing a small subset at many different levels vs. a larger grouping at fewer levels. Additionally, as the size of the design space increases, component additions become a labor intensive and error prone task.

To utilize powerful statistical designs and obtain meaningful results, we have designed and evaluated a convenient and efficient media development format by utilizing a high-throughput cell culture system. Data will be shared demonstrating the ability of this system to increase the coverage of the media design studies in delivering a more detailed picture of the optimal media performance space.