The baculovirus insect cell system has been used widely for biopesticide applications and for the production of recombinant proteins, vaccines and vectors for gene delivery. To be commercially viable, especially for the low margin applications of biopesticides and veterinary vaccines, the yield of this production system needs to be improved. One of the important approaches is the infection of insect cell cultures at high cell densities in order to maximize volumetric production. However, the cell specific yield gradually reduces with increasing infection cell density (ICD). As a result, the volumetric production can not improve further regardless of efforts to increase the uninfected cell density in batch or fedbatch cultures. The phenomenon known as "the cell density effect" appears not only during the late stage of protein production, but also during the early stage of virus replication and transcription. Discovering the changes in intra and extracellular metabolites between low and high ICDs may reveal evidence for improving yields. This PhD thesis focuses on the development of an intracellular metabolite extraction protocol for infected insect cell cultures and for measuring intra and extracellular metabolites of infected cells of different baculovirus infected insect cell systems.Prior to analyzing the intracellular metabolites of low and high ICDs, an extraction protocol was developed and validated for insect cell cultures, especially infected insect cells. The ice-cold saline quenching solution developed for mammalian cells did not work well for insect cells, especially for infected cultures. Therefore, a modification of the quenching solution was made by an addition of 0.2% Pluronic® F-68 that successfully protected the cell membrane during quenching and washing procedures. In addition, one wash was found to be enough for removal of medium originated metabolites adhering on the surface of cell membranes. The ATP recovery (over the direct extract) of the extraction protocol using ice-cold saline quenching solution plus 0.2% Pluronic® F-68 after one wash was almost 90% for Spodoptera frugiperda (Sf9) cells infected with a recombinant Autographa californica multiple nucleopolyhedrovirus (rAcMNPV) and Helicoverpa zea (HzAM1) cells infected with a wild-type Helicoverpa armigera single nucleopolyhedrovirus (HearNPV) at 24 hours post infection (hpi).The intracellular metabolite patterns and substrate consumption rates of low versus high ICDs was first investigated for the Sf9/rAcMNPV system in Sf900™III medium. A preliminary study was conducted to identify how late post-infection the cell membrane integrity was maintained during the quenching and washing processes. The result showed that the extraction protocol is efficient up to 48 hpi for infected Sf9 cells. Levels of intracellular nucleotides (tri-phosphates), amino acids (AA), and TCA cycle intermediates iii (α-ketoglutarate, pyruvate) during an infection at a low ICD (2×10 6 cells/mL) were shown to be higher than those during an infection at a high...