Optimized dual assay for the transgenes selection and screening in CHO cell line development for recombinant protein production

OBJECTIVE

To develop a simple robust methodology of screening multiple CHO cell clones secreting recombinant proteins to assess their specific productivity.

RESULTS

We developed a dual assay based on immunoassay measurements of a recombinant protein expression combined with staining of viable cells with resazurin. Following this approach, colonies can be simultaneously assessed for cell growth rate and for production of a recombinant protein. Combination of these two assays enables to estimate productivity of a recombinant protein per cell from the very early stages of a cell line development process (CLD) and exclude poor producers from further steps. Comparison of the dual assay with a standard CLD protocol followed by only analysis of protein expression level showed at least 10-20% increase in the amount of clones that can be included into pool of high-producers at early stages. This shortens duration of a typical CLD scheme from 23 to 19 weeks.

CONCLUSIONS

Our method: (i) allows to include into workflow clones that demonstrate slow growth during single cell cloning but producing high amounts of a target protein, which otherwise would be lost in standard protocols of cells screening; (ii) can be applied for testing of DNA vectors for transfection and protein production; (iii) can be used for monitoring the heterogeneity of cell population and analysis of stable pools productivity.

High-level expression and preparation of recombinant human fibrinogen as biopharmaceuticals

Fibrinogen is a large and complex glycoprotein containing two sets of each of three different chains (α, β and γ). There have been no reports of high-level expression of fibrinogen at commercial levels using mammalian cultured cells such as CHO cells because of the difficulty in highly expressing a protein with such a complex structure. We achieved high-level (1.3 g/l or higher) expression of recombinant human fibrinogen using CHO DG44 cells by optimizing the expression system and culture conditions. We also succeeded in establishing a high-recovery preparation method for recombinant fibrinogen that rarely yields degraded products. To characterize the properties of the recombinant human fibrinogen, we performed SDS-PAGE; western blotting of the α, β and γ chains using specific antibodies and scanning electron microscopy observations of fibrin fibres. We also evaluated the functional equivalence between recombinant fibrinogen and plasma fibrinogen with respect to the release of fibrinopeptides initiated by thrombin and its cross-linking properties. The basic properties of recombinant fibrinogen showed no apparent differences from those of plasma fibrinogen. Here, we report the development of methods for the culture and preparation of recombinant human fibrinogen of satisfactory quality that can be scaled up to the commercial level.