Quantitative analysis of cell culture media components is a critical step in upstream bioprocess development. A comprehensive and quantitative understanding of cellular metabolic components could lead to a greater understanding of the process impacts on cell growth, productivity, and product quality during biopharmaceutical development and manufacturing. Therefore, there is a vital need to establish an efficient analytical method to monitor the concentration profiles of important cell culture media nutrients and metabolites over the course of the production process or over different lots. However, it remains challenging to simultaneously monitor multiple classes of metabolites (amino acids, vitamins, carbohydrates, fatty acids, nucleotides nucleic acids, organic acids) in cell culture media because of their diversified physical, chemical properties and large range of concentrations.
This application note describes an efficient and reproducible method developed using the PerkinElmer QSight 420 LC/MS/MS for the targeted quantification of key metabolites in a single run with high sensitivity, selectivity and is well suited for cell culture metabolite profiling experiments. The method conditions and performance data, including repeatability and linearity, are provided.