Bioprocess digital twins of mammalian cell culture for advanced biomanufacturing

Today’s biomanufacturing processes are still operated based on experience, and thus can hardly cope with increasing bioprocess complexity. Recently, there is a growing interest in industrial applications of the digital twins (DT) which integrate physical and virtual systems via real-time data monitoring, thus enabling their interactive communications for the enhanced operational efficiency towards advanced biomanufacturing. We suggest that bioprocess DT of cell cultures can be developed by incorporating in-line monitoring, advanced data analytics with machine and deep learning, and mechanistic models representing the mammalian cells and bioreactor for virtually mirroring their behaviors under adjustable process conditions. In this review, we summarize and highlight recent advances in the key components within bioprocess DT platform and discuss the current challenges with future research direction.