Antibody titer and viable cell density (VCD) are two important parameters that need to be closely monitored during the process of cell line development and manufacturing of therapeutic antibodies. Typically, determination of each parameter requires 10–100 μL of supernatant sample, which is not suitable for small scale cultivation. In this study, we demonstrated that as low as 2 μL of culture supernatants were sufficient for the analysis using UV-Vis spectrum assisted with partial least squares (PLS) model. The results indicated that the optimal PLS models could be used to predict antibody titer and VCD with the linear relationship between reference values and predicted values at R² values ranging from 0.8 to > 0.9 in supernatant samples obtained from four different single clones and in polyclones that were cultured in various selection stringencies. Then, the percentage of cell viability and productivity were predicted from a set of samples of polyclones. The results indicated that while all predicted % cell viability were very similar to the actual value at RSEP value of 6.7 and R² of 0.8908, the predicted productivity from 14 of 18 samples were closed to the reference measurements at RSEP value of 22.4 and R² of 0.8522. These results indicated that UV-Vis combined with PLS has potential to be used for monitoring antibody titer, VCD, and % cell viability for both online and off-line therapeutic production process.

Graphical abstract