Real-time biomass-concentration monitoring in animal-cell cultures.

The accurate, on-line measurement of cell concentration in animal-cell cultures is an on-going problem in bioprocess engineering, and the development of new monitoring techniques is an area of intensive and fruitful research. This article summarizes the recent advances, trends and problems in this field and focuses, in particular, on optical sensors, including the latest laser and infrared probes. Alternative methods, such as multiple-extinction fluorimetry, real-time imaging and particle-size analysis, are also discussed. Although many of these techniques are still at an experimental stage, we believe that some of them have been developed sufficiently that we advocate their routine use in bioprocess monitoring and control.