Production Of Recombinant Therapeutic Proteins Research Articles

Technology toolbox for cell line development - next generation cell line development technologies

Background Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells are the most widely used host for large scale production of recombinant therapeutic proteins. A combination of several gene editing approaches applied to Novartis proprietary CHO cell line resulted in a superior cell line with a significant increase of titer and improved product quality. Inter alia we have surprisingly identified a key protease responsible for proteolytic degradation of mainly non-antibody format therapeutic proteins. The recently published CHO genome in combination with screening methods and cell line engineering tools has enabled the development of this novel CHO cell line.

Establishment and characterization of new human cell lines for recombinant therapeutic protein production

Background Recombinant therapeutic proteins are increasingly requested with advances in tissue engineering using stem cells. Human cell line is an attractive host for the production of such glycoprotein, but there are few reports on human cells for a commercial production [1]. In this study, we established new human lymphoid cell lines from peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) by treatment with phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA) under a non-GMP condition, and characterized them by gene and protein expression analyses.

ChemInform Abstract: Recent Advances in Engineering Yeast for Pharmaceutical Protein Production

AbstractReview: 116 refs.

CRISPR-Cas targeted plasmid integration into mammalian cells via non-homologous end joining.

Mammalian cells are widely used for the production of therapeutic recombinant proteins, as these cells facilitate accurate folding and post-translational modifications often essential for optimum activity. Targeted insertion of a plasmid harboring a gene of interest into the genome of mammalian cells for the expression of a desired protein is a key step in production of such biologics. Here we show that a site specific double strand break (DSB) generated both in the genome and the donor plasmid using the CRISPR-Cas9 system can be efficiently used to target ∼5 kb plasmids into mammalian genomes via nonhomologous end joining (NHEJ). We were able to achieve efficiencies of up to 0.17% in HEK293 cells and 0.45% in CHO cells. This technique holds promise for quick and efficient insertion of a large foreign DNA sequence into a predetermined genomic site in mammalian cells.

Hansenula polymorpha Pmt4p Plays Critical Roles in O-Mannosylation of Surface Membrane Proteins and Participates in Heteromeric Complex Formation.

O-mannosylation, the addition of mannose to serine and threonine residues of secretory proteins, is a highly conserved post-translational modification found in organisms ranging from bacteria to humans. Here, we report the functional and molecular characterization of the HpPMT4 gene encoding a protein O-mannosyltransferase in the thermotolerant methylotrophic yeast Hansenula polymorpha, an emerging host for the production of therapeutic recombinant proteins. Compared to the deletion of HpPMT1, deletion of another major PMT gene, HpPMT4, resulted in more increased sensitivity to the antibiotic hygromycin B, caffeine, and osmotic stresses, but did not affect the thermotolerance of H. polymorpha. Notably, the deletion of HpPMT4 generated severe defects in glycosylation of the surface sensor proteins HpWsc1p and HpMid2p, with marginal effects on secreted glycoproteins such as chitinase and HpYps1p lacking a GPI anchor. However, despite the severely impaired mannosylation of surface sensor proteins in the Hppmt4∆ mutant, the phosphorylation of HpMpk1p and HpHog1p still showed a high increase upon treatment with cell wall disturbing agents or high concentrations of salts. The conditional Hppmt1pmt4∆ double mutant strains displayed severely impaired growth, enlarged cell size, and aberrant cell separation, implying that the loss of HpPMT4 function might be lethal to cells in the absence of HpPmt1p. Moreover, the HpPmt4 protein was found to form not only a homomeric complex but also a heteromeric complex with either HpPmt1p or HpPmt2p. Altogether, our results support the function of HpPmt4p as a key player in O-mannosylation of cell surface proteins and its participation in the formation of heterodimers with other PMT members, besides homodimer formation, in H. polymorpha.

Recent advances in optimal cell banking of mammalian cells for biopharmaceutical production

Mammalian cells are routinely used in the biopharmaceutical industry for production of recombinant therapeutic proteins. Cell banking to ensure preservation of these cells at low temperatures for an extended period of time is at the core of establishing a manufacturing process utilizing these cells and various strategies have evolved over time to ensure recovery of viable ‘and’ functional cells. This paper provides an overview of cryopreservation practices and highlights recent approaches that have been adopted to improve cryopreservation outcomes for these industrially relevant production cell lines.

Plant-based solutions for veterinary immunotherapeutics and prophylactics.

An alarming increase in emergence of antibiotic resistance among pathogens worldwide has become a serious threat to our ability to treat infectious diseases according to the World Health Organization. Extensive use of antibiotics by livestock producers promotes the spread of new resistant strains, some of zoonotic concern, which increases food-borne illness in humans and causes significant economic burden on healthcare systems. Furthermore, consumer preferences for meat/poultry/fish produced without the use of antibiotics shape today’s market demand. So, it is viewed as inevitable by the One Health Initiative that humans need to reduce the use of antibiotics and turn to alternative, improved means to control disease: vaccination and prophylactics. Besides the intense research focused on novel therapeutic molecules, both these strategies rely heavily on the availability of cost-effective, efficient and scalable production platforms which will allow large-volume manufacturing for vaccines, antibodies and other biopharmaceuticals. Within this context, plant-based platforms for production of recombinant therapeutic proteins offer significant advantages over conventional expression systems, including lack of animal pathogens, low production costs, fast turnaround and response times and rapid, nearly-unlimited scalability. Also, because dried leaves and seeds can be stored at room temperature for lengthy periods without loss of recombinant proteins, plant expression systems have the potential to offer lucrative benefits from the development of edible vaccines and prophylactics, as these would not require “cold chain” storage and transportation, and could be administered in mass volumes with minimal processing. Several biotechnology companies currently have developed and adopted plant-based platforms for commercial production of recombinant protein therapeutics. In this manuscript, we outline the challenges in the process of livestock immunization as well as the current plant biotechnology developments aimed to address these challenges.

Quaternary ammonium salt containing soybean oil: An efficient nanosize gene delivery carrier for halophile green microalgal transformation

Dunaliella salina, a halophile green microalga, is considered a robust photobioreactor and a remarkable cost beneficial system for the production of therapeutic recombinant proteins. In this study, with low overall cost, a proper cationic lipid was synthesized from renewable soybean oil as an efficient gene delivery carrier for D. salina cells to create appropriate protein-producing transformed cell lines. To obtain an effective carrier, quaternary ammonium salt containing soybean oil (QASSO) was synthesized through the ring opening reaction of the epoxy groups of epoxidized soybean oil with diethylamine. QASSO was characterized using nuclear magnetic resonance and Fourier-transform infrared instruments. QASSO was used to prepare nanolipoplex construct using plasmid DNA molecules containing green fluorescent protein (GFP) as reporter gene. These nanolipoplexes (QASSO-pGFP, N/P=3) and QASSO had diameter of 63.62 and 110.63nm, and zeta potential of −68.89 and 48.25mV at pH 7.0, respectively. Results indicated the GFP gene expression and cytoplasmic accumulation of GFP protein in the transformants after incubation under desirable conditions for 48h and 1week. The transformation efficiency was quantitatively assayed by flow cytometry, which yielded transformations of 58.87% and 48.34% for QASSO and 38.32% and a negligible percentage for Polyfect® after 48h and 1week incubation, respectively.

Industry perspective on Chinese hamster ovary cell ‘omics’

The biopharmaceutical sector has become a significant segment of pharmaceutical industry. More than 200 biopharmaceutical products have reached market approval and more than 350 additional products are currently in clinical trials [1]. Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells are the main host for production of recombinant therapeutic proteins. The 2011 CHO-produced biopharmaceutical sales were nearly US$60 billion [2]. Approximately 45% of new products approved in the period from 2006 to 2010 produced in CHO cells and seven out of ten of the world’s top-selling biopharmaceutical drugs are expressed in CHO cells [1]. Despite some progress in improving therapeutic protein productivity, the cellular machinery of CHO cells is still not well understood and consequently good knowledge of recombinant protein production is missing. Therefore, functional genomics to better understand and improve productivity of CHO cell lines in pharmaceutical and biotech industry is getting more and more relevant. This includes applied genomic screening as well as cell line engineering tools. Thanks to recent advances in decoding the CHO cell genome and transcriptome [3–6] novel cell line engineering technologies as gene knockout (e.g., zinc finger nucleases [ZFNs], transcription activator-like effector nucleases [TALENs], clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats [CRISPRs]), RNA interference (e.g., si/shRNA) as well as overexpression or introduction of new genes can now be applied to modify CHO cell lines. The expectation is that the now available Chinese hamster genomic information will lead to better understanding of the expression of recombinant proteins in CHO cells. This includes the utilization of genomics/ transcriptomic tools (e.g., next-generation sequencing [NGS], expression/comparative genomics microarray techniques), proteomic tools (e.g., mass spectrometry [MS]), as well as metabolomic techniques (e.g., nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy).

Patents in therapeutic recombinant protein production using mammalian cells.

The industrial production of recombinant proteins preferentially requires the generation of stable cell lines expressing proteins in a quick, relatively facile, and a reproducible manner. Different methods are used to insert exogenous DNA into the host cell, and choosing the appropriate producing cell is of paramount importance for the efficient production and quality of the recombinant protein. This review addresses the advances in recombinant protein production in mammalian cell lines, according to key patents from the last 30 years.

Production of recombinant therapeutic proteins in the milk of transgenic animals

Production of recombinant therapeutic proteins in the milk of transgenic animals

Production of therapeutic proteins in the chloroplast of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii.

Chloroplast transformation in the photosynthetic alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii has been used to explore the potential to use it as an inexpensive and easily scalable system for the production of therapeutic recombinant proteins. Diverse proteins, such as bacterial and viral antigens, antibodies and, immunotoxins have been successfully expressed in the chloroplast using endogenous and chimeric promoter sequences. In some cases, proteins have accumulated to high level, demonstrating that this technology could compete with current production platforms. This review focuses on the works that have engineered the chloroplast of C. reinhardtii with the aim of producing recombinant proteins intended for therapeutical use in humans or animals.

Yeast synthetic biology for the production of recombinant therapeutic proteins.

The production of recombinant therapeutic proteins is one of the fast-growing areas of molecular medicine and currently plays an important role in treatment of several diseases. Yeasts are unicellular eukaryotic microbial host cells that offer unique advantages in producing biopharmaceutical proteins. Yeasts are capable of robust growth on simple media, readily accommodate genetic modifications, and incorporate typical eukaryotic post-translational modifications. Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a traditional baker's yeast that has been used as a major host for the production of biopharmaceuticals; however, several nonconventional yeast species including Hansenula polymorpha, Pichia pastoris, and Yarrowia lipolytica have gained increasing attention as alternative hosts for the industrial production of recombinant proteins. In this review, we address the established and emerging genetic tools and host strains suitable for recombinant protein production in various yeast expression systems, particularly focusing on current efforts toward synthetic biology approaches in developing yeast cell factories for the production of therapeutic recombinant proteins.

Application of a two-dimensional disposable rocking bioreactor to bacterial cultivation for recombinant protein production

Disposable rocking bioreactors (RBs) are widely employed for cultivation of recombinant mammalian and insect cell lines, although the perception of inadequate mass transfer has prevented their application to bioprocesses based on microbial platforms. In this study, one-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) RBs were assessed and compared with the conventional stirred tank reactor (STR) for recombinant therapeutic protein production in Escherichia coli. The comparison involved: (1) physical characterization of oxygen mass transfer efficiency and mixing intensity, (2) growth characteristics in batch cultivation, and (3) culture performance for the production of recombinant protein. Our results show that oxygen mass transfer was comparable between the 1D RB and STR at low working volume (WV), declining linearly with increasing WV, and was highest in the 2D RB for all tested WVs with the maximum mass transfer coefficient (kLa) at 3L WV. Well mixing behavior was observed in all three systems for water and aqueous carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) solutions. Batch growth characteristics were similar in all bioreactor systems, although metabolite accumulation was significant in the 1D RB. Culture performance for the production of recombinant GST-hCD83ext (glutathione S-transferase-hCD83ext fusion protein) was similar in terms of soluble protein yield and inclusion body formation for all bioreactor systems.

Identifying and engineering promoters for high level and sustainable therapeutic recombinant protein production in cultured mammalian cells

Promoters are essential on plasmid vectors to initiate transcription of the transgenes when generating therapeutic recombinant proteins expressing mammalian cell lines. High and sustained levels of gene expression are desired during therapeutic protein production while gene expression is useful for cell engineering. As many finely controlled promoters exhibit cell and product specificity, new promoters need to be identified, optimized and carefully evaluated before use. Suitable promoters can be identified using techniques ranging from simple molecular biology methods to modern high-throughput omics screenings. Promoter engineering is often required after identification to either obtain high and sustained expression or to provide a wider range of gene expression. This review discusses some of the available methods to identify and engineer promoters for therapeutic recombinant protein expression in mammalian cells.

Elimination of diaminopeptidase activity in Pichia pastoris for therapeutic protein production

Yeast are important production platforms for the generation of recombinant proteins. Nonetheless, their use has been restricted in the production of therapeutic proteins due to differences in their glycosylation profile with that of higher eukaryotes. The yeast strain Pichia pastoris is an industrially important organism. Recent advances in the glycoengineering of this strain offer the potential to produce therapeutic glycoproteins with sialylated human-like N- and O-linked glycans. However, like higher eukaryotes, yeast also express numerous proteases, many of which are either localized to the secretory pathway or pass through it en route to their final destination. As a consequence, nondesirable proteolysis of some recombinant proteins may occur, with the specific cleavage being dependent on the class of protease involved. Dipeptidyl aminopeptidases (DPP) are a class of proteolytic enzymes which remove a two-amino acid peptide from the N-terminus of a protein. In P. pastoris, two such enzymes have been identified, Ste13p and Dap2p. In the current report, we demonstrate that while the knockout of STE13 alone may protect certain proteins from N-terminal clipping, other proteins may require the double knockout of both STE13 and DAP2. As such, this understanding of DPP activity enhances the utility of the P. pastoris expression system, thus facilitating the production of recombinant therapeutic proteins with their intact native sequences.

Plants as an Alternate System for the Large Scale Production of Recombinant Therapeutic Proteins

Plants as an Alternate System for the Large Scale Production of Recombinant Therapeutic Proteins

Use of the Uteroglobin Platform for the Expression of a Bivalent Antibody against Oncofetal Fibronectin in Escherichia coli

Escherichia coli is a robust, economic and rapid expression system for the production of recombinant therapeutic proteins. However, the expression in bacterial systems of complex molecules such as antibodies and fusion proteins is still affected by several drawbacks. We have previously described a procedure based on uteroglobin (UG) for the engineering of very soluble and stable polyvalent and polyspecific fusion proteins in mammalian cells (Ventura et al. 2009. J. Biol. Chem. 284∶26646–26654.) Here, we applied the UG platform to achieve the expression in E. coli of a bivalent human recombinant antibody (L19) toward the oncofetal fibronectin (B-FN), a pan-tumor target. Purified bacterial L19-UG was highly soluble, stable, and, in all molecules, the L19 moiety maintained its immunoreactivity. About 50–70% of the molecules were covalent homodimer, however after refolding with the redox couple reduced-glutathione/oxidized-glutathione (GSH/GSSG), 100% of molecules were covalent dimers. Mass spectrometry studies showed that the proteins produced by E. coli and mammalian cells have an identical molecular mass and that both proteins are not glycosylated. L19-UG from bacteria can be freeze-dried without any loss of protein and immunoreactivity. In vivo, in tumor-bearing mice, radio-iodinated L19-UG selectively accumulated in neoplastic tissues showing the same performance of L19-UG from mammalian cells. The UG-platform may represent a general procedure for production of various biological therapeutics in E. coli.

Production of Recombinant Therapeutic Proteins in Human Cells: Current Achievements and Future Perspectives

Over the past 20 years the demand for recombinant proteins has increased significantly. Mammalian cell lines have been extensively used to produce recombinant proteins. This expression system offers several advantages over microbial systems, mammalian cells have the cellular machinery to promote the secretion of the recombinant product and the posttranslational modifications, like glycosylation that is present in many of recombinant therapeutic proteins in the market. Human cell lines have emerged as a new and powerful alternative for production of such products. These cells are able to produce recombinant proteins with posttranslational modifications more similar to their natural counterparts, producing proteins with human-like glycosylation pattern avoiding immunogenic reactions against epitopes nonhumans. This review presents the available human cell lines that can be used in pharmaceutical industry, the advantages of this expression system and the main efforts made in this field.

Engineering the Cellular Protein Secretory Pathway for Enhancement of Recombinant Tissue Plasminogen Activator Expression in Chinese Hamster Ovary Cells: Effects of CERT and XBP1s Genes

Cell line development is the most critical and also the most time-consuming step in the production of recombinant therapeutic proteins. In this regard, a variety of vector and cell engineering strategies have been developed for generating high-producing mammalian cells; however, the cell line engineering approach seems to show various results on different recombinant protein producer cells. In order to improve the secretory capacity of a recombinant tissue plasminogen activator (t-PA)-producing Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cell line, we developed cell line engineering approaches based on the ceramide transfer protein (CERT) and X-box binding protein 1 (XBP1) genes. For this purpose, CERT S132A, a mutant form of CERT that is resistant to phosphorylation, and XBP1s were overexpressed in a recombinant t-PA-producing CHO cell line. Overexpression of CERT S132A increased the specific productivity of t-PA-producing CHO cells up to 35%. In contrast, the heterologous expression of XBP1s did not affect the t-PA expression rate. Our results suggest that CERTS132A- based secretion engineering could be an effective strategy for enhancing recombinant t- PA production in CHO cells.