On-line measurement of oxygen uptake in cell culture using the dynamic method.

Measurement of oxygen uptake rate is useful in assessing growth, viability, and metabolic activity. In cell culture, however, the oxygen demand is extremely small (typically 0.1-0.3 mM O(2)L-h) and is very difficult to measure accurately using conventional offgas analysis. In many industrial submerged cell culture systems, dissolved oxygen levels are controlled between preset limits by intermittent sparging of air or oxygen. This article describes a computational method for the automatic online determination of oxygen uptake from the dynamic dissolved oxygen probe response. Experimental measurements show that for a typical hybridoma culture, specific oxygen demand is 0.15 mM O(2)/10(9) cells/h. (c) 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.