Raman for real-time glucose control — worth it at pilot scale?

Raman earns its place when you want closed-loop feedback (glucose/lactate), not just monitoring — it can tighten a fed-batch and cut manual sampling. The catch is calibration: you need enough runs across the design space and models don’t always transfer between scales/cell lines. Many teams start with capacitance for viable biomass (cheaper, robust) and add Raman once the process is stable enough to justify maintaining the model.