The need for better monitoring and control of mammalian cell cultures and the quality and safety control of products obtained from these processes is still high. In an attempt to enable better monitoring of the process and the glycosylation pattern of typical mammalian cell cultures two modem sensor methods were used on a chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cell culture producing the glycoprotein macrophage colony stimulating factor (M-CSF). An electronic nose was connected to the reactor and measurements were made online. Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) measurement were performed on cell culture supernatant samples.

The electronic nose was used to study microbial and fungal infections in a cell culture. Principal component analysis and cluster analysis were used to evaluate the multivariate data obtained from the electronic nose. The results indicate that it is possible to use the electronic nose to detect contaminations in cell cultures.

A novel method that combines the strong affinity of an antibody with the weak affinity of lectins was used in SPR measurements of the crude cell culture supernatant. It is suggested that this method could be used to monitor the glycosylation pattern of recombinant glycoproteins on-line.