Data-Driven Tools for Optimizing Cell Culture Media

Cell culture is a central component of protein development and the media used during this process can have a significant impact on its performance. In the R&D environment, media technicians are responsible for both the precise production of cell culture media and the optimization of media recipes to maximize qualities such as growth and stability.

Capturing the detailed information about recipes, ingredients, and batches needed to optimize media production is one of the key challenges faced within protein engineering. The advances in cell culture technologies in recent years have quickly outpaced simple spreadsheet and database-based systems for storing media recipes and batch IDs. Today’s media technicians need software tools to consistently structure data about media recipes, ingredients and batches, so it can be easily accessed and queried on demand.

LabKey Biologics LIMS provides essential tools to help protein engineering teams overcome key challenges in cell culture media development, including:

Detailed Recipe Registration

Registering a recipe in LabKey Biologics LIMS allows technicians to specify all of the information needed for its execution including ingredients, ingredient concentrations, steps for creating the mixture, expiration time, and other key aspects. The system also allows the creation of mixtures that contain other mixtures, even when you don’t know all of their underlying concentrations or ingredients (as is often the case with vendor-supplied mixtures).

Media technicians have a number of different methods available for registering media recipes, depending on their complexity and scale. Technicians can create recipes individually using the media registration UI or they can register many recipes at once using bulk upload features or programmatic registration via LabKey Biologics API.

Consistent Batch Preparation

Biologics LIMS helps minimize formulation errors by auto-calculating the amounts for each ingredient in a recipe based on a target mixture amount. As a technician prepares a batch of mixture, they are prompted to input the actual amount of each ingredient used, as well as the raw material ID. If the media technician needs to use multiple bottles of a raw ingredient to fulfill the formulation, the system will allow them to register multiple raw materials for a single ingredients.

Following the Media Trail

The structured data captured in LabKey Biologics allows R&D teams to track the complete lineage of each individual sample, and present lineage as a visualization or grid. Sample characteristics, assay results, and relevant media details are tied together allowing media technicians to troubleshoot problematic raw materials, better optimize their batches, and improve upon media recipes to improve protein yield.

With the right tools, cell culture media technicians can consistently produce media batches and iterate media recipes to maximize performance. Request a demo to see this functionality in action and learn more about how LabKey Biologics LIMS can help accelerate your biotherapeutic R&D.