Mammalian cell cultures represent the major source for a number of very high-value biopharmaceutical products, including monoclonal antibodies (MAbs), viral vaccines, and hormones. These products are produced in relatively small quantities due to the highly specialised culture conditions and their susceptibility to either reduced productivity or cell death as a result of slight deviations in the culture conditions. The use of mathematical relationships to characterise distinct parts of the physiological behaviour of mammalian cells and the systematic integration of this information into a coherent, predictive model, which can be used for simulation, optimisation, and control purposes would contribute to efforts to increase productivity and control product quality. Models can also aid in the understanding and elucidation of underlying mechanisms and highlight the lack of accuracy or descriptive ability in parts of the model where experimental and simulated data cannot be reconciled. This paper reviews developments in the modelling of mammalian cell cultures in the last decade and proposes a future direction -the incorporation of genomic, proteomic, and metabolomic data, taking advantage of recent developments in these disciplines and thus improving model fidelity. Furthermore, with mammalian cell technology dependent on experiments for information, model-based experiment design is formally introduced, which when applied can result in the acquisition of more informative data from fewer experiments. This represents only part of a broader framework for model building and validation, which consists of three distinct stages: theoretical model assessment, model discrimination, and model precision, which provides a systematic strategy from assessing the identifiability and distinguishability of a set of competing models to improving the parameter precision of a final validated model.
NomenclatureC ij -component i concentration in jth model compartment; R ijk -transport rate of component i into or out of compartment j from the kth source or sink compartment; N in -number of source compartments; N outnumber of sink compartments; r ijl -reaction rate of component i in compartment j in the lth i-generating or i-consuming reaction; N gen -number of reactions generating component i; N con -number of reactions consuming component i; -specific growth rate; app max -apparent maximum specific growth rate; K dspecific death rate; N v -viable cell number; N t -total cell number; D -dilution rate; -parameter; 0 -parameter; -parameter; m -cell mass; m 0 -mass of a dividing cell; t -time; N -cell number; r -single cell growth rate; S -nutrient concentration; s -nutrient concentration vector; À -cell transition rate; ppartition probability density function; Y -yield coefficient; f (m) -the division probability density function; B -coefficient for the beta distribution incorporating the gamma function; x max -vector of maximum XPS 120742 (CYTO) -ms-code CYTO853 -product element 5254543 -23 September 2004 -Newgen