Roche, a leader in research-focused healthcare with combined strengths in pharmaceuticals, diagnostics and world’s largest biotechnology company, announced the launch of new metabolite-testing reagent sets to determine the concentration of iron and phosphate - two parameters relevant for cell growth and productivity during fermentation processes. The tests are designed for applications in research and bio-manufacturing process development and will allow the measurement of iron (complexed iron /Fe3+ ions) and phosphate on Cedex bio instruments.

“The new tests ideally expand our metabolite testing portfolio for mammalian cell fermentation analytics. It is currently the most comprehensive portfolio combining iron and phosphate testing with other relevant parameters such as IgG, LDH and other standard metabolites,” said Ruedi Stoffel, Head of Biochemical Reagents and Custom Biotech. “Thanks to their reliability, precision, and ease of use, our Cedex instruments and the new testing portfolio are perfectly designed to optimize process development and monitoring of bio-pharmaceutical production particularly when using chemically defined media. The rapidly increasing customer base of our Cedex instruments will benefit from our continuously expanding testing portfolio.”

The new tests can be easily installed by barcode reading through the customer supporting the flexible testing concept. Offered as liquid-stable formulation, they are ready for use and do not require manual dilution or pipetting steps. With their increased precision, accuracy and long calibration intervals, the new iron and phosphate tests offer cost-effective and convenient testing with less hands-on time for users.

Roche supplies reliable systems for all types of in-process control of fermentation processes using mammalian and microbial cells in the form of its Cedex bio analyzer for low-throughput and its new Cedex Bio HT analyzer for high-throughput applications. To obtain even more comprehensive in-process manufacturing information, Roche recommends combining its Cedex Bio instruments with its Cedex HiRes cell analyzers.  

By minimising hands-on time, the Cedex Bio HT analyzer demonstrates greater precision, sensitivity and linearity than instruments that use membrane-based technology. It includes three different measuring methods, enabling the analysis of IgG (immunoglobulin G) and LDH (lactate dehydrogenase), as well as various substrates and metabolites such as glutamate, glutamine, sodium, potassium, glucose, lactate and ammonia, plus the newly launched iron and phosphate tests.