Inside ATLAS – Transforming Surfactant Monitoring in Bioprocessing

Surfactants are indispensable in the production of biologics, vaccines, and cell therapies. Yet for years, they’ve posed a persistent challenge: they are notoriously difficult to monitor accurately and in real time. That challenge is now being addressed by Nirrin and its groundbreaking Atlas platform, a real-time spectroscopy solution that is reshaping how biomanufacturers measure and manage surfactants.

In this episode of The Cell Culture Dish podcast, Editor Brandy Sargent spoke with Bryan Hassell, Founder and CEO of Nirrin, and Hannah Furrelle, Analytical Scientist at the company, to discuss the science behind Atlas and its implications for bioprocessing.

Real-Time Data Without Compromise

At the core of Atlas’s innovation is its ability to provide high-quality quantitative data in under a minute—without any sample preparation. “The real breakthrough with Atlas is speed with confidence,” explained Hassell. “Time to market for biopharma is increasingly critical, yet a lot of critical decisions still rely on data from assays that take days or even months. Atlas changes that.”

Unlike traditional techniques, which often require significant sample manipulation and suffer from matrix interference, Atlas uses high-precision tunable laser spectroscopy to directly analyze samples in their native form. “What makes Atlas so powerful is that we’re looking at the sample without altering it,” Furrelle explained. “That means the data we get is true to the process—there’s no distortion from prep steps or artifacts introduced by the method.”

Moving Beyond PLS: A New Modeling Approach

One of the technological breakthroughs enabling this leap in performance is Nirran’s move away from PLS models in favor of an iterative optimization framework. This approach eliminates the need for extensive training data, reducing model complexity while increasing robustness and flexibility.

“Where a PLS model might need 20 to 30 bioreactor runs to build a dataset, Atlas delivers data on the fly,” Hassell said. “It’s not only faster, it’s more robust, more compliant, and more versatile—especially for applications like scale-up or tech transfer, where traditional models often break down.”

Applications Across the Biomanufacturing Workflow

Atlas is already being integrated into real-world bioprocessing environments, including both batch and continuous manufacturing. In batch processes, manufacturers use Atlas to confirm critical parameters—like protein and excipient concentratio