Govind Rao, University of Maryland, Baltimore, Maryland, USA, and colleagues demonstrate the possibility of sensor-enabled rocking T-flasks as a disposable bioreactor alternative at the mL-scale. As wave bioreactors are becoming increasingly popular at small and medium volume scale manufacture, it is desirable to create a scale-down tool that can mimic and predict cell culture performance of wave bioreactors.

The team shows that disposable cell culture devices such as T-flasks can be readily equipped with patch-based optical sensors, giving these devices important monitoring capabilities usually found in fully instrumented bench-scale bioreactors. A detailed mass transfer characterization of rocking T-flasks demonstrated that they have superior oxygen transfer capabilities and at very low Re numbers than any other Process Scout Devices (PSDs) investigated.

The study suggests the application of rocking T-flasks as scale-down model of bench-scale wave bioreactors. They provide similar dissolved oxygen (DO) profiles, maximum cell density and protein titers despite the very different scales. Sensor enabled rocking T-flasks are a promising upstream bioprocess tool for clone screening studies, clone stability studies, inoculum expansion, and scale-down model studies.

• Optical Sensor Enabled Rocking T-Flasks as Novel Upstream Bioprocessing Tools,
  Jose R. Vallejos, Martina Micheletti, Kurt A. Brorson, Antonio R. Moreira, Govind Rao,
  Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2012.
  DOI: 10.1002/bit.24508