Biopharmaceutical Products from Animal Cell Culture

Screening and selection strategy for the establishment of biosimilar to trastuzumab-expressing CHO-K1 cell lines

The high prices of biopharmaceuticals or biologics used in the treatment of many diseases limit the access of patients to these novel therapies. One example is the monoclonal antibody trastuzumab, successfully used for breast cancer treatment. An economic alternative is the generation of biosimilars to these expensive biopharmaceuticals. Since antibody therapies may require large doses over a long period of time, robust platforms and strategies for cell line development are essential for the generation of recombinant cell lines with higher levels of expression. Here, we obtained trastuzumab-expressing CHO-K1 cells through a screening and selection strategy that combined the use of host cells pre-adapted to protein-free media and suspension culture and lentiviral vectors. The results demonstrated that the early screening strategy obtained recombinant CHO-K1 cell populations with higher enrichment of IgG-expressing cells. Moreover, the measurement of intracellular heavy chain polypeptide by flow cytometry was a useful metric to characterize the homogeneity of cell population, and our results suggest this could be used to predict the expression levels of monoclonal antibodies in early stages of cell line development. Additionally, we propose an approach using 25 cm2 T-flasks in suspension and shaking culture conditions as a screening tool to identify high producing cell lines. Finally, trastuzumab-expressing CHO-K1 clones were generated and characterized by batch culture, and preliminary results related to HER2-recognition capacity were successful. Further optimization of elements such as gene optimization, vector selection, type of amplification/selection system, cell culture media composition, in combination with this strategy will allow obtaining high producing clones.

Quantifying the potential for bursting bubbles to damage suspended cells

Bubbles that rise to the surface of a cell suspension can damage cells when they pop. This phenomenon is particularly problematic in the biotechnology industry, as production scale bioreactors require continuous injection of oxygen bubbles to maintain cell growth. Previous studies have linked cell damage to high energy dissipation rates (EDR) and have predicted that for small bubbles the EDR could exceed values that would kill many cells used in bioreactors, including Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) cells. However, it’s unclear how many cells would be damaged by a particular bursting bubble, or more precisely how much volume around the bubble experiences these large energy dissipation rates. Here we quantify these volumes using numerical simulations and demonstrate that even though the volume exceeding a particular EDR increases with bubble size, on a volume-to-volume basis smaller bubbles have a more significant impact. We validate our model with high-speed experiments and present our results in a non-dimensionalized framework, enabling predictions for a variety of liquids and bubble sizes. The results are not restricted to bubbles in bioreactors and may be relevant to a variety of applications ranging from fermentation processes to characterizing the stress levels experienced by microorganisms within the sea surface microlayer.

Production of Erythropoietin-Specific Polyclonal Antibodies

BACKGROUND

Erythropoietin, as a principal hormone promotes red blood cell production in bone marrow. Varieties of erythropoietin biosimilar are being produced by recombinant DNA technology in cell cultures. The detection or quantifi cation of these molecules are being performed by diff erent methods which some of theme such as Western blot and enzymelinked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) require specifi c antibodies. High cost, inappropriate shipping (cold chain failures), reduced sensitivity and thus poor detection performance are common pitfalls of using commercial kits for performing immunological tests.

OBJECTIVES

To produce in-house polyclonal antibody against active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) of recombinant human erythropoietin (rh-EPO) was the aim of this study.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Two healthy female albino rabbits were injected four times in 14 days interval using rh-EPO API as antigen. The produced antibody was separated from plasma via either caprylic acid or saturated ammonium sulfate precipitation and the results were compared from each purification methodologies. The antibody was further purified by ion exchange chromatography. Acceptable purity and good immunogenicity were detected respectively by SDS-PAGE and western blot analysis. The purified antibody was compared with a commercial kit to determine rh-EPO concentration in diff erent steps of production batches via ELISA.

RESULTS

The purity of antibodies after ion exchange chromatography, obtained from caprylic acid and ammonium sulfate precipitation were 97 and 80%, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS

As producing in house kits is one of the important challenges of bio- pharmaceutical manufacturers, a simple, cost- and time-effective, and easy to scale up strategy for making in-house polyclonal antibody was set up. Caprylic acid precipitation resulted higher purity than ammonium sulfate and fi nally purified antibody (97% purity) used as a capture antibody in sandwich ELISA test was able to detect erythropoietin antigen as sensitive (100%) and specifi c (100%) as commercial kits.

Impact of cell lysis on the description of cell growth and death in cell culture

The primary task of process development is a process design that guarantees product quality and maximizes product quantity. One part of the process development is the identification of critical process parameters. Especially in cell culture processes, unwanted cell damage as critical process parameter is still challenging in stirred tank reactors and needs therefore to be considered. Nevertheless, this topic and its effects on process performance are currently not well discussed and not verified in literature until now. The process of cell damage or lysis can be defined as the loss of integrity of the cells. For the investigation of this phenomenon, a model-based designed fed-batch cultivation with Chinese hamster ovary cells was performed. Besides measurements of viable and dead cell concentration, lysed cell count was determined by DNA measurements. Based on these analytics, different hypotheses, characterizing the cell death, were compared. From this, four main statements could be derived: (i) consideration of lysis in cell culture processes is of great importance for the description of the living biomass population in terms of growth and dying; (ii) a higher effort in process monitoring facilitates significantly model development; (iii) in contradiction to existing models from literature, our verification approach demonstrated a direct correlation of lysis with viable cell concentration and therefore with productivity; and (iv) lysis could be effectively described by only one model parameter, the specific lysis rate from viable cells to lysed cells. All these statements could be accurately proven by statistical methods. Our results enable future detailed investigations of the causes of cell damage and the influences of cell lysis on product quality and quantity. Potential application fields are scale-up issues, process optimization, and impurity screening.

Research and development of therapeutic mAbs: An analysis based on pipeline projects

As the subject of active research and development (R&D) in recent decades, monoclonal antibodies have emerged among the major classes of therapeutic agents for treatment of many human diseases, especially cancers, infections, and immunological disorders. This article surveys the landscape of R&D projects of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), which are mostly used for disease immunotherapy, from a number of perspectives, including therapeutic indications, development phases, participants, and citation of related patents. The results of this research can be used as a reference resource for pharmaceutical researchers, investors, and policymakers in the field of therapeutic mAbs.