A novel control scheme for inducing angiostatin-human IgG fusion protein production using recombinant CHO cells in a oscillating bioreactor

Production of small ruminant morbillivirus, rift valley fever virus and lumpy skin disease virus in CelCradle™ -500A bioreactors

BACKGROUND

Animal vaccination is an important way to stop the spread of diseases causing immense damage to livestock and economic losses and the potential transmission to humans. Therefore effective method for vaccine production using simple and inexpensive bioprocessing solutions is very essential. Conventional culture systems currently in use, tend to be uneconomic in terms of labor and time involved. Besides, they offer a limited surface area for growth of cells. In this study, the CelCradle™-500A was evaluated as an alternative to replace conventional culture systems in use such as Cell factories for the production of viral vaccines against small ruminant morbillivirus (PPR), rift valley fever virus (RVF) and lumpy skin disease virus (LSD).

RESULTS

Two types of cells Vero and primary Lamb Testis cells were used to produce these viruses. The study was done in 2 phases as a) optimization of cell growth and b) virus cultivation. Vero cells could be grown to significantly higher cell densities of 3.04 × 109 using the CelCradle™-500A with a shorter doubling time as compared to 9.45 × 108 cells in Cell factories. This represents a 19 fold increase in cell numbers as compared to seeding vs only 3.7 fold in Cell factories. LT cells achieved modestly higher cell densities of 6.7 × 108 as compared to 6.3 × 108 in Cell factories. The fold change in densities for these cells was 3 fold in the CelCradle™-500A vs 2.5 fold in Cell factories. The titers in the conventional system and the bioreactor were not significantly different. However, the Cell-specific virus yield for rift valley fever virus and lumpy skin disease virus are higher (25 virions/cell for rift valley fever virus, and 21.9 virions/cell for lumpy skin disease virus versus 19.9 virions/cell for rift valley fever virus and 10 virions/cell for lumpy skin disease virus).

CONCLUSIONS

This work represents a novel study for primary lamb testis cell culture in CellCradle™-500A bioreactors. In addition, on account of the high cell densities obtained and the linear scalability the titers could be further optimized using other culture process such us perfusion.

Transient light-activated gene expression in Chinese hamster ovary cells

Background

Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells are widely used for industrial production of biopharmaceuticals. Many genetic, chemical, and environmental approaches have been developed to modulate cellular pathways to improve titers. However, these methods are often irreversible or have off-target effects. Development of techniques which are precise, tunable, and reversible will facilitate temporal regulation of target pathways to maximize titers. In this study, we investigate the use of optogenetics in CHO cells. The light-activated CRISPR-dCas9 effector (LACE) system was first transiently transfected to express eGFP in a light-inducible manner. Then, a stable system was tested using lentiviral transduction.

Results

Transient transfections resulted in increasing eGFP expression as a function of LED intensity, and activation for 48 h yielded up to 4-fold increased eGFP expression compared to cells kept in the dark. Fluorescence decreased once the LACE system was deactivated, and a protein half-life of 14.9 h was calculated, which is in agreement with values reported in the literature. In cells stably expressing the LACE system, eGFP expression was confirmed, but there was no significant increase in expression following light activation.

Conclusions

Taken together, these results suggest that optogenetics can regulate CHO cell cultures, but development of stable cell lines requires optimized expression levels of the LACE components to maintain high dynamic range.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12896-021-00670-1.

Overcoming Challenges of Hepatitis C Virus Envelope Glycoprotein Production in Mammalian Cells

Posttranslational modifications (PTMs) are often required for proper folding and physiological function of proteins, including the envelope glycoproteins 1 and 2 (E1 and E2) of hepatitis C virus (HCV). Commonly used expression systems such as bacteria, yeast, and baculovirus produce soluble HCV E1 and E2 at very low yields, as the cellular environment and molecular machinery necessary for PTMs may be suboptimal or missing. Here, we describe an expression system for HCV E2 ectodomain (eE2) with 11 N-linked glycans and eight disulfide bonds, which combines lentivirus transduction of mammalian cells and a continuous growth, adherent cell bioreactor. It is environmentally friendly, as well as cost- and time-efficient compared to other methods of recombinant protein expression in mammalian systems with final yields of eE2 approaching 60 mg/L of cell culture supernatant. eE2 produced by this system is amenable to a variety of biophysical studies, including structural determination by X-ray crystallography. Considering the ease of use and flexibility, this method can be applied to express an array of difficult target proteins in a variety of mammalian cell lines.

The high-throughput protein sample production platform of the Northeast Structural Genomics Consortium

We describe the core Protein Production Platform of the Northeast Structural Genomics Consortium (NESG) and outline the strategies used for producing high-quality protein samples. The platform is centered on the cloning, expression and purification of 6X-His-tagged proteins using T7-based Escherichia coli systems. The 6X-His tag allows for similar purification procedures for most targets and implementation of high-throughput (HTP) parallel methods. In most cases, the 6X-His-tagged proteins are sufficiently purified (>97% homogeneity) using a HTP two-step purification protocol for most structural studies. Using this platform, the open reading frames of over 16,000 different targeted proteins (or domains) have been cloned as>26,000 constructs. Over the past 10 years, more than 16,000 of these expressed protein, and more than 4400 proteins (or domains) have been purified to homogeneity in tens of milligram quantities (see Summary Statistics, http://nesg.org/statistics.html). Using these samples, the NESG has deposited more than 900 new protein structures to the Protein Data Bank (PDB). The methods described here are effective in producing eukaryotic and prokaryotic protein samples in E. coli. This paper summarizes some of the updates made to the protein production pipeline in the last 5 years, corresponding to phase 2 of the NIGMS Protein Structure Initiative (PSI-2) project. The NESG Protein Production Platform is suitable for implementation in a large individual laboratory or by a small group of collaborating investigators. These advanced automated and/or parallel cloning, expression, purification, and biophysical screening technologies are of broad value to the structural biology, functional proteomics, and structural genomics communities.

Japanese encephalitis virus production in Vero cells with serum-free medium using a novel oscillating bioreactor

A novel oscillating bioreactor, BelloCell, was successfully applied for the cultivation of Vero cells using serum-free medium, and the production of Japanese encephalitis virus. The BelloCell requires no air sparging, pumping, or agitation, and thus provides a low shear environment. Owing to its simple design, BelloCell is extremely easy to handle and operate. Using this BelloCell (500 ml culture), Vero cells reached a maximum number of 2.8 x 10(9) cells and the Japanese encephalitis virus yield reached 6.91 x 10(11) PFU, versus 9.0 x 10(8) cells and 2.98 x 10(11) PFU using a spinner flask (500 ml) with microcarriers. The cell yield and virus production using BelloCell were markedly higher than with microcarrier culture. The neutralizing capacity of the Japanese encephalitis virus produced using BelloCell was equal to that using a microcarrier system. Therefore, these benefits should enable BelloCell to be adopted as a simple system for high population density cell culture and virus production.