Ways to Improve Quality Control of Culture Medium Used for Mycoplasma Detection

Abstract

An urgent safety concern associated with biological products is contamination with mycoplasmas, which may originate from donor tissues and organs, virus harvests, culture medium components, trypsin, animal blood serum, as well as be transmitted by personnel involved in the manufacture of medicines. Currently, due to an increase in the range of biologicals available, there is a need for more sensitive and specific test methods. In the Russian practice, microbiological (culture-based) testing of finished pharmaceutical products for mycoplasma contamination is performed using complex culture media whose sensitivity depends on the quality of proteins, ingredients, and reagents used. Growth promotion properties of the media are determined according to the State Pharmacopoeia of the Russian Federation, 14th ed., using a single test strain — Mycoplasma arginini G230 (M. arginini G230 industry reference material). The aim of the study was to analyse current Russian and foreign requirements for the quality control of culture media that are used for mycoplasma detection, in order to update and improve the quality control procedure in Russia. It was demonstrated that a compelling advantage of the State Pharmacopoeia of the Russian Federation is the possibility of using a semi-liquid culture medium which does not require special aerobic or anaerobic incubation conditions and allows for quantification of mycoplasma colonies and determination of mycoplasma titre in culture medium while testing its growth promotion properties using reference М. arginini G230 test strain. The analysis revealed some differences in Russian and foreign requirements for quality evaluation of culture media. These differences were taken into account when developing recommendations for improvement of the Russian test procedure, i.e. enlarging the range of test strains used and development of respective reference standards.