Better media and feeds for higher CHO yield

In an article written in November 2017 by Dr. Angelo DePalma in Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News (GEN), ExcellGene and CSO Prof. F. Wurm were referred to discussing the benefits of better media and feeds as the main driver for the higher yields from CHO cells and the processes developed for large scale manufacturing. This conclusion is based on more than 3 decades of observation and analysis of CHO cells for manufacturing purposes. This also includes profound genetic analysis of CHO cells by Wurm and his co-workers. CHO cells are “mysterious” in their responsiveness to different environment, but can be optimised “clonal cell line by clonal cell line” and “protein by protein” individually for their tasks in bioreactors to deliver the product yields and the product qualities required by the industry. Key to all of this is a profound understanding of their “needs” and thus assuring the highest growth rate for early phases of the process, to maximize biomass in the reactor and then assuring active and productive cells for 10-14 days in fed-batch processes. Today’s processes can arrive at 30x 10⁶ cells/mL, a more than 10 time higher biomass than seen at the early days of the protein manufacturing industry in CHO. Thus, without any significant increase of the specific productivities seen in the 1980s (20-30 pg/cell/day) volumetric productivities of more than 5 g/L can be observed with highly optimised processes.

ExcellGene’s record in this respect is a 10 g/L fed-batch process for a non-antibody process, executed for a client at the 1000 L scale in pre-clinical engineering runs.

To learn more about ExcellGene’s research on the subject, view our White Paper on Cloning of CHO Cells, Productivity and Genetic Stability by Prof. Florian M. Wurm and Dr. Maria Joao Wurm.