Regeneration of Spent Culture Media for Sustainable and Continuous mAb Production via Ion Concentration Polarization

In modern bioprocessing, cell culture media is one of the most significant cost drivers, yet the nutrients and other critical factors in the media are often not fully utilized. With the renewed emphasis on reducing the cost of bioprocessing, there is much interest in reducing the overall use of cell culture media. In this work, we introduce a mesoscale microfluidic separation device based on the ion concentration polarization (ICP) process to regenerate the spent media for reuse by removing critical waste products from the cell culture that are known to inhibit the growth of the cells. We demonstrated that up to 75% of spent culture media can be regenerated and reused without affecting the cell viability. A detailed analysis of the materials consumed during antibody production indicated that one could improve the water process mass intensity by up to 33% by regenerating and recycling the media. Given that ICP separation systems have already been scaled up to support large-volume processing, it would be feasible to deploy this technology for manufacturing scale bioreactors (e.g., 50 L perfusion culture of CHO cells), reducing the overall operation cost and water use.