Kinetics study of hydridoma cultures and antibody production

Monoclonal antibodies (MAb) produced by hybridomas have an expanding market for use in diagnostic assays, affinity separations of valuable biotechnology products and therapeutic applications. The purpose of the study is to determine which information can be transposed from simpler systems such as batch, semi-continuous and continuous experiments to optimize operation of hollow fiber bioreactors (HFBR). In line with this general objective, a simple model is used to describe the kinetic trends in hybridoma batch and semi-continuous cultures. Constant values were assumed for the yield of biomass on glucose and the antibody production rate. The cell growth, substrate consumption and antibody concentration are all in reasonable agreement with experimental results. The cell growth was also found to be well described by a simple Monod-type equation, with glutamine as the limiting substrate.