A gas-inducible expression system in HEK.EBNA cells applied to controlled proliferation studies by expression of p27(Kip1)

Transport-controlled growth decoupling for self-induced protein expression with a glycerol-repressible genetic circuit

Decoupling cell formation from recombinant protein synthesis is a potent strategy to intensify bioprocesses. Escherichia coli strains with mutations in the glucose uptake components lack catabolite repression, display low growth rate, no overflow metabolism, and high recombinant protein yields. Fast growth rates were promoted by the simultaneous consumption of glucose and glycerol, and this was followed by a phase of slow growth, when only glucose remained in the medium. A glycerol-repressible genetic circuit was designed to autonomously induce recombinant protein expression. The engineered strain bearing the genetic circuit was cultured in 3.9 g L-1 glycerol + 18 g L-1 glucose in microbioreactors with online oxygen transfer rate monitoring. The growth was fast during the simultaneous consumption of both carbon sources (C-sources), while expression of the recombinant protein was low. When glycerol was depleted, the growth rate decreased, and the specific fluorescence reached values 17% higher than those obtained with a strong constitutive promoter. Despite the relatively high amount of C-source used, no oxygen limitation was observed. The proposed approach eliminates the need for the substrate feeding or inducers addition and is set as a simple batch culture while mimicking fed-batch performance.

Affecting HEK293 Cell Growth and Production Performance by Modifying the Expression of Specific Genes

The HEK293 cell line has earned its place as a producer of biotherapeutics. In addition to its ease of growth in serum-free suspension culture and its amenability to transfection, this cell line’s most important attribute is its human origin, which makes it suitable to produce biologics intended for human use. At the present time, the growth and production properties of the HEK293 cell line are inferior to those of non-human cell lines, such as the Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) and the murine myeloma NSO cell lines. However, the modification of genes involved in cellular processes, such as cell proliferation, apoptosis, metabolism, glycosylation, secretion, and protein folding, in addition to bioprocess, media, and vector optimization, have greatly improved the performance of this cell line. This review provides a comprehensive summary of important achievements in HEK293 cell line engineering and on the global engineering approaches and functional genomic tools that have been employed to identify relevant genes for targeted engineering.

Transient Expression of Recombinant Membrane-eGFP Fusion Proteins in HEK293 Cells

Membrane proteins play important roles in many biological processes and are a major drug target. However, only a limited number of structures of eukaryotic membrane proteins have been determined so far. Besides the challenges in crystallizing these proteins, one of the main bottlenecks in structure determination is their recombinant expression. The mammalian HEK293 cell line provides a natural environment for expression of eukaryotic membrane proteins but optimization of transfection and cultivation time is often necessary to yield amounts of protein suitable for structural studies.Here we describe a detailed protocol for expression and purification of membrane proteins from HEK293 cells with an example of the human peptide transporter, PepT2. In the first part, we focus on the expression optimization by changing transfection protocol and cultivation time. In the second part, we describe a robust protocol for large-scale expression and purification of membrane proteins based on affinity chromatography and gel filtration.

Engineering Mammalian Designer Cells for the Treatment of Metabolic Diseases

Synthetic biology applies engineering principles to biological systems and has significantly advanced the design of synthetic gene circuits that can reprogram cell activities to perform new functions. The ability to engineer mammalian designer cells with robust therapeutic behaviors has brought new opportunities for treating metabolic diseases. In this review, the authors highlight the most recent advances in the development of synthetic designer cells uploaded with open- or closed-loop gene circuits for the treatment of metabolic disorders including diabetes, hypertension, hyperuricemia, and obesity, and discuss the current technologies and future perspectives in applying these designer cells for clinical applications. In the future, more and more rationally designed cells will be constructed and revolutionized to treat a number of metabolic disorders in an intelligent manner.

Breaking the bottleneck: Eukaryotic membrane protein expression for high-resolution structural studies

The recombinant expression of eukaryotic membrane proteins has been a major stumbling block in efforts to determine their structures. In the last two years, however, five such proteins have yielded high-resolution X-ray or electron diffraction data, opening the prospect of increased throughput for eukaryotic membrane protein structure determination. Here, we summarize the major expression systems available, and highlight technical advances that should facilitate more systematic screening of expression conditions for this physiologically important class of targets.

Inducible product gene expression technology tailored to bioprocess engineering

Bioprocess engineering has developed as a discipline to design optimal culture conditions and bioreactor operation protocols for production cell lines engineered for constitutive expression of desired protein pharmaceuticals. With the advent of heterologous gene regulation systems it has become possible to fine-tune expression of difficult-to-produce protein pharmaceuticals to optimal levels and to conditionally engineer cell metabolism for the best production performance. However, most of the small-molecules used to trigger expression of product or metabolic engineering product genes are incompatible with downstream processing regulations or process economics. Recent progress in product gene control design has resulted in the development of bioprocess-compatible regulation systems, which are responsive to physical parameters such as temperature or physiologic trigger molecules that are either an inherent part of host cell metabolism or intrinsic components of licensed protein-free cell culture media, such as redox status, vitamin H and gaseous acetaldehyde. While all of these systems have been shown to fine-tune product gene expression independent of the host cell metabolism some of them can be plugged into metabolic networks to capture critical physiologic parameters and convert them into an optimal production response. Assembly of individual product gene control modalities into synthetic networks has recently enabled construction of autonomously regulated time-delay or cell density-sensitive gene circuits, which trigger population-wide induction of product gene expression at a predefined time or culture density. We provide a comprehensive overview on the latest developments in the design of bioprocess-compatible product gene control systems.

A 3D collagen microsphere culture system for GDNF-secreting HEK293 cells with enhanced protein productivity

Mammalian cell culture technology has been used for decades in mass production of therapeutic proteins. However, unrestricted cell proliferation usually results in low-protein productivity. Controlled proliferation technologies such as metabolism intervention and genetic manipulation are therefore applied to enhance the productivity. Nevertheless, these strategies induced growth arrest with reduced viability and increased apoptosis. In this study, we report a new controlled proliferation technology by encapsulating human embryonic kidney (HEK) 293 cells over-expressing glial-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) in 3D collagen microspheres for extended culture. We investigated the viability, proliferation, cell cycle and GDNF productivity of HEK293 cells in microspheres as compared to monolayer culture. This system provides a physiologically relevant tissue-like environment for cells to grow and exerts proliferation control throughout the culture period without compromising the viability. A significant increase in the production rate of GDNF was found in the 3D microsphere system comparing with the monolayer culture. GDNF productivity was also significantly affected by the initial cell number and the serum concentration. The secreted GDNF was still bioactive as it induced neurite extension in PC12 cells. In summary, the 3D collagen microsphere system presents a cost-effective controlled growth technology for protein production in pharmaceutical manufacturing.

Using cell engineering and omic tools for the improvement of cell culture processes

Significant strides have been made in mammalian cell based biopharmaceutical process and cell line development over the past years. With several established mammalian host cell lines and expression systems, optimization of selection systems to reduce development times and improvement of glycosylation patterns are only some of the advances being made to improve cell culture processes. In this article, the advances pertaining to cell line development and cell engineering strategies are discussed. An overview of the cell engineering strategies to enhance cellular characteristics by genetic manipulation are illustrated, focusing on the use of genomics and proteomics tools and their application in such endeavors. Included in this review are some of the early studies using the 'omic' technique to understand cellular mechanisms of product synthesis and secretion, apoptosis, cell proliferation and the influence of the physicochemical environment. The article highlights the significance of integrating genomics and proteomics data with the vast amounts of bioprocess data for improved analysis of the biological pathways involved. Further improvements of the techniques and methodologies used are needed but ultimately, the new cell engineering strategies should provide great insight into the regulatory networks within the cell in a bioprocess environment and how to manipulate them to increase overall productivity.