VOC analysis for rapid, early detection of bacteria, mold, and mycoplasma in cell and tissue cultures

Identifying microbial contamination early in cell culture processing can save time, money, and reagents. However, standard strategies for performing contamination testing often take days, leaving production vulnerable to potential spread of bacteria, mold, and mycoplasma. Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are released by every living organism. These VOCs are increasingly being used to identify cell pathologies, study cell metabolomics, and assess other biological processes. Often, gas chromatography with mass spectrometry (GC-MS) is used to perform these analyses. Here, we utilized gas chromatography with ion mobility spectrometry (GC-IMS) to detect bacteria, mold, and mycoplasma in both cell and tissue cultures. Traditional GC-MS was used to validate the detection of microbes in cell cultures using GC-IMS. In most cases, headspace samples were collected just two hours after inoculations. GC-IMS was able to detect as low as 10 CFU of 5 different industry standard microbes, including both bacteria and mold species. In addition, mycoplasma presence, which is notoriously difficult to test, was detectable at 24 h post-inoculation. GC-IMS is highly sensitive, has a small footprint, requires minimal training, and can provide results in as little as 20 min per sample. Combined, this makes it an ideal strategy for detecting contamination in cell and tissue production workflows. Such rapid detection could save substantial amounts of time, money, and valuable reagents, and reduce risks to patient safety.