Fluorescence excitation-emission matrix (EEM) spectroscopy for rapid identification and quality evaluation of cell culture media components

The application of fluorescence excitation-emission matrix (EEM) spectroscopy to the quantitative analysis of complex, aqueous solutions of cell culture media components was investigated. These components, yeastolate, phytone, recombinant human insulin, eRDF basal medium, and four different chemically defined (CD) media, are used for the formulation of basal and feed media employed in the production of recombinant proteins using a Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) cell based process. The comprehensive analysis (either identification or quality assessment) of these materials using chromatographic methods is time consuming and expensive and is not suitable for high-throughput quality control. The use of EEM in conjunction with multiway chemometric methods provided a rapid, nondestructive analytical method suitable for the screening of large numbers of samples. Here we used multiway robust principal component analysis (MROBPCA) in conjunction with n-way partial least squares discriminant analysis (NPLS-DA) to develop a robust routine for both the identification and quality evaluation of these important cell culture materials. These methods are applicable to a wide range of complex mixtures because they do not rely on any predetermined compositional or property information, thus making them potentially very useful for sample handling, tracking, and quality assessment in biopharmaceutical industries.