Combined approach of NMR and chemometrics for screening peptones used in the cell culture medium for the production of a recombinant therapeutic protein

Soy peptones or soy hydrolysates are widely used as key medium additives in serum-free cell culture processes for industrial production of therapeutic recombinant proteins. The heterogeneous nature of these vegetable-derived materials can lead to substantial lotto-lot variability in cell culture processes. In this study, we demonstrated the feasibility of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy in combination with chemometrics in rapid screening peptone lots in order to optimize efficiency and consistency of large-scale protein production. This report is the first that shows a correlation between the intrinsic NMR spectral characteristics of complex heterogeneous materials and product titer using chemometrics.