Probing the baculovirus infection process is essential in optimizing recombinant protein production. Typically, researchers monitor the infection process in stirred reactors that contain cells that have been infected at different times after virus inoculation, particularly if cells pass the primary infection and become infected by progeny virus. This chapter describes several alternative bioreactor systems for baculovirus infection. We provide an example alternative system that holds promise to avoid asynchronous distributions in infection time. Namely, we describe a two-stage reactor system consisting of an upstream continuous stirred tank reactor and a downstream tubular reactor with segmented plug flow for probing baculovirus infection and production.
Keywords: Baculovirus infection; Insect cell culture; Monitoring; Tubular reactor.