Expression Vector Engineering For Cell Line Development - New Roles For "Old" Sequences

By Michel Kobr, Philippe Chattelard, and Markus O. Imhof

Expression vector and cell line engineering is the basis for expression and industrial production of biopharmaceuticals. The ultimate goal is to obtain clonal cell lines that secrete the protein of interest with high cellspecific productivity, and at consistently high levels over an extended number of cell generations, allowing for scale-up and cost-efficient large-scale manufacturing. Productivity and stability of expression are thus the prerequisites for developing commercially viable processes.

The interest in rapid evaluation of new proteins in the clinic requires the use of platform technologies in cell line and process development. This is a limiting factor in implementing new approaches regarding vectors, host cells, media and processes. Nevertheless, we will try to review some of our recent exploratory activities in this article. We report the use of new combinations of vector elements, and the "validation" of general concepts regarding vector composition. For a thorough review of vector elements, we recommend the excellent review of S. Makrides,1 and references therein.

Article posted with the permission from BioProcessing Journal a WilBio publication