Mammalian cells dominate the biopharmaceutical industry and maintaining cell viability is a limiting factor in most mammalian cell cultures. This project is focused on developing an online (in-situ) dielectric spectroscopy sensor that is capable of measuring cell viability in real-time to enable optimization of culture conditions for Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) cell lines in micro-bioreactors.

Background: Embryonal carcinoma (EC) cells derived from germ cell tumors are valuable tools for investigating differentiation and developmental biology processes in vitro. The advantage of the reproducible and rapid expansion of these cell lines provides a useful alternative to embryos for the study of mammalian cell differentiation. During early stages of cell differentiation, the rate of tran...