Green fluorescent protein as a second selectable marker for selection of high producing clones from transfected CHO cells

Mammalian cells are often used for the expression of recombinant proteins. The process of screening transfected cells randomly for high producing clones is tedious and time consuming. We evaluated using green fluorescent protein (GFP) for selection of high producing clones by fluorescence-activated cell sorter (FACS) to reduce screening effort. We expressed neurotrophin-3 (NT3), deoxyribonuclease (DNase), or vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) with GFP in Chinese hamster ovary cells. The vector expressed the desired secreted protein and the selectable marker, dihydrofolate reductase, in one expression unit and the intracellular GFP in a second expression unit. Transfected cells were grown in selection medium and sorted by FACS. High fluorescence clones were obtained and found to produce high amounts of the desired protein; VEGF productivity correlated well with GFP fluorescence in 48 clones. Further studies demonstrated that productivity correlated very well with RNA of the desired protein. For comparison, we randomly picked and screened 144 VEGF clones, and the highest producing VEGF clone obtained produced 0.7 pg/cell/day. In contrast, the highest producing VEGF clone obtained by FACS sorting produced 4.4 pg/cell/day. FACS sorting therefore selected high producing clones efficiently. Since an assay for the desired protein is not required, high producing clones for a protein of unknown function can be obtained by FACS sorting followed by measuring the RNA level of the desired protein in the highly fluorescent clones.     

100-liter transient transfection

This is the first report of two successful 100 l scale transienttransfections in a standard stirred bioreactor. More than half a gram of a monoclonal antibody (IgG) were produced in less than 10 days using a technology called large-scale transient gene expression(LS-TGE). Suspension adapted HEK 293 EBNA SF cells were transfectedwithin a 150 l (nominal) bioreactor by a modified calcium phosphateco-precipitation method with more than 75 mg of plasmid DNA per run.A mixture of three different plasmids, one encoding for the heavychain of a human recombinant immunoglobulin, the other for the corresponding light chain and a third one for the green fluorescent protein (GFP, 2–4% of DNA in transfection cocktail)were co-transfected. The GFP vector was chosen to monitor transfection efficiency. Expression of GFP could be registered asearly as 20 h after DNA addition, using fluorescence microscopy. We demonstrate that transient transfection can be done at the100 l scale, thus providing a new tool to produce hundreds of milligrams or even gram amounts of recombinant protein. Akey advantage of LS-TGE resides in its speed. In the presentedcases, the entire production process for the synthesis of halfa gram of a recombinant antibody, including DNA preparationand necessary expansion of cells prior to transfection, wasexecuted in less than a month. Having an established transfection/expression process allows to run productioncampaigns for any given protein, within one facility, with onesingle host cell line and therefore only one single seed train. Without any need to create and maintain stable cell lines, expression of new r-proteins is not only faster and more economical but also more flexible.     

Continuous high-titer HIV-1 vector production

Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1)-based vectors are currently made by transient transfection, or using packaging cell lines in which expression of HIV-1 Gag and Pol proteins is induced. Continuous vector production by cells in which HIV-1 Gag-Pol is stably expressed would allow rapid and reproducible generation of large vector batches. However, attempts to make stable HIV-1 packaging cells by transfection of plasmids encoding HIV-1 Gag-Pol have resulted in cells which secrete only low levels of p24 antigen (20-80 ng/ml), possibly because of the cytotoxicity of HIV-1 protease. Infection of cells with HIV-1 can result in stable virus production; cell clones that produce up to 1,000 ng/ml secreted p24 antigen have been described. Here we report that expression of HIV-1 Gag-Pol by a murine leukemia virus (MLV) vector allows constitutive, long-term, high-level (up to 850 ng/ml p24) expression of HIV-1 Gag. Stable packaging cells were constructed using codon-optimized HIV-1 Gag-Pol and envelope proteins of gammaretroviruses; these producer cells could make up to 10(7) 293T infectious units (i.u.)/ml (20 293T i.u./cell/day) for at least three months in culture.     

High-throughput clonal selection of recombinant CHO cells using a dominant selectable and amplifiable metallothionein-GFP fusion protein

Transfected mammalian cells can be used for the production of fully processed recombinant proteins for medical and industrial purposes. However, the isolation of high-producing clones is traditionally time-consuming. Therefore, we developed a high-throughput screening method to reduce the time and effort required to isolate high-producing cells. This involved the construction of an expression vector containing the amplifiable gene metallothionein (MT), fused in-frame to green fluorescent protein (GFP). The fusion gene (MTGFP) confers metal resistance similar to that of the wild-type metallothionein and expression can be monitored using either flow cytometry or a fluorometer to measure green fluorescence. Expression of MTGFP acted as a dominant selectable marker allowing rapid and more efficient selection of clones at defined metal concentrations than with the antibiotic G418. Cells harboring MTGFP responded to increasing metal concentrations with a corresponding increase in fluorescence. There was also a corresponding increase in recombinant protein production, indicating that MTGFP could be used as a selectable and amplifiable gene for the coexpression of foreign genes. Using our expression vector encoding MTGFP, we demonstrate a high-throughput clonal selection protocol for the rapid isolation of high-producing clones from transfected CHO cells. We were able to isolate cell lines reaching specific productivities of >10 microg hGH/10(6) cells/day within 4 weeks of transfection. The advantage of this method is that it can be easily adapted for automated procedures using robotic handling systems.     

Rapid protein production using CHO stable transfection pools

During early preclinical development of therapeutic proteins, representative materials are often required for process development, such as for pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic studies in animals, formulation design, and analytical assay development. To rapidly generate large amounts of representative materials, transient transfection is commonly used. Because of the typical low yields with transient transfection, especially in CHO cells, here we describe an alternative strategy using stable transfection pool technology. Using stable transfection pools, gram quantities of monoclonal antibody (Mab) can be generated within 2 months post‐transfection. Expression levels for monoclonal antibodies can be achieved ranging from 100 mg/L to over 1000 mg/L. This methodology was successfully scaled up to a 200 L scale using disposable bioreactor technology for ease of rapid implementation. When fluorescence‐activated cell sorting was implemented to enrich the transfection pools for high producers, the productivity could be improved by about three‐fold. We also found that an optimal production time window exists to achieve the highest yield because the transfection pools were not stable and productivity generally decreased over length in culture. The introduction of Universal chromatin‐opening elements elements into the expression vectors led to significant productivity improvement. The glycan distribution of the Mab product generated from the stable transfection pools was comparable to that from the clonal stable cell lines. © 2010 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Biotechnol. Prog., 2010     

Construction of stable producer cells to make high-titer lentiviral vectors for dendritic cell-based vaccination

Lentiviral vectors (LVs) enveloped with an engineered Sindbis virus glycoprotein can specifically bind to dendritic cells (DCs) through the surface receptor DC-SIGN and induce antigen expression, thus providing an efficient method for delivering DC-directed vaccines. In this study, we constructed a stable producer line (LV-MGFP) for synthesizing DC-SIGN-targeted HIV-1-based LVs (DC-LVs) encoding green fluorescent protein (GFP) by a concatemeric array transfection technique. We demonstrated that the established stable clones could routinely produce vector supernatants with titers above 10(7) transduction units per milliliter (TU/mL) during a continuous 3-month cell passage. The producer cells were also capable of generating similar titers of DC-LVs in serum-free medium. Moreover, the addition of 1-deoxymannojirimycin (DMJ) enabled the producer cells to manufacture DC-LVs with both improved titers and enhanced potency to evoke antigen-specific CD8(+) T cell responses in mice. The stable lines could accommodate the replacement of the internal murine stem cell virus (MSCV) promoter with the human ubiquitin-C (Ubi) promoter in the lentiviral backbone. The resulting DC-LVs bearing Ubi exhibited the enhanced potency to elicit vaccine-specific immunity. Based on accumulated evidence, our studies support the application of this production method in manufacturing DC-LVs for preclinical and clinical testing of novel DC-based immunization.     

Hybrid Sindbis/Epstein-Barr virus episomal expression vector for inducible production of proteins

Alphavirus vectors are attractive as recombinant protein expression systems due to the high level of gene expression achieved. The combination of two mutations in the viral replicase, which render the replicase noncytopathic and temperature-sensitive, allowed the generation of a DNA-based vector (CytTs) that shows temperature inducible expression. This vector is of significant value for the production of toxic protein. However, like for other stable expression systems, tedious screening of individual cell clones are required in order to get a high producer cell clone. To circumvent this, we generated an episomally replicating vector by introducing an Epstein-Barr virus mini-replicon unit into CytTs. This novel vector allowed rapid generation of cell populations that showed tight regulation of expression and comparable expression levels to the ones achieved with high producer cell clones with CytTs. Moreover, protein production with selected cell populations could easily be scaled-up to a fermentation process.     

Generation of stable cell line by using chitosan as gene delivery system

Establishing stable cell lines are useful tools to study the function of various genes and silence or induce the expression of a gene of interest. Nonviral gene transfer is generally preferred to generate stable cell lines in the manufacturing of recombinant proteins. In this study, we aimed to establish stable recombinant HEK-293 cell lines by transfection of chitosan complexes preparing with pDNA which contain LacZ and GFP genes. Chitosan which is a cationic polymer was used as gene delivery system. Stable HEK-293 cell lines were established by transfection of cells with complexes which were prepared with chitosan and pVitro-2 plasmid vector that contains neomycin drug resistance gene, beta gal and GFP genes. The transfection efficiency was shown with GFP expression in the cells using fluorescence microscopy. Beta gal protein expression in stable cells was examined by beta-galactosidase assay as enzymatically and X-gal staining method as histochemically. Full complexation was shown in the above of 1/1 ratio in the chitosan/pDNA complexes. The highest beta-galactosidase activity was obtained with transfection of chitosan complexes. Beta gal gene expression was 15.17 ng/ml in the stable cells generated by chitosan complexes. In addition, intensive blue color was observed depending on beta gal protein expression in the stable cell line with X-gal staining. We established a stable HEK-293 cell line that can be used for recombinant protein production or gene expression studies by transfecting the gene of interest.     

New cell line development for antibody-producing Chinese hamster ovary cells using split green fluorescent protein

Background

The establishment of high producer is an important issue in Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cell culture considering increased heterogeneity by the random integration of a transfected foreign gene and the altered position of the integrated gene. Fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS)-based cell line development is an efficient strategy for the selection of CHO cells in high therapeutic protein production.

Results

An internal ribosome entry site (IRES) was introduced for using two green fluorescence protein (GFP) fragments as a reporter to both antibody chains, the heavy chain and the light chain. The cells co-transfected with two GFP fragments showed the emission of green fluorescence by the reconstitution of split GFP. The FACS-sorted pool with GFP expression had a higher specific antibody productivity (q _Ab) than that of the unsorted pool. The q _Ab was highly correlated with the fluorescence intensity with a high correlation coefficient, evidenced from the analysis of median GFP and q _Ab in individual selected clones.

Conclusions

This study proved that the fragment complementation for split GFP could be an efficient indication for antibody production on the basis of high correlation of q _Ab with reconstitution of GFP. Taken together, we developed an efficient FACS-based screening method for high antibody-producing CHO cells with the benefits of the split GFP system.     

The use of recombinase mediated cassette exchange in retroviral vector producer cell lines: predictability and efficiency by transgene exchange

Currently, retroviral vector producer cell lines must be established for the production of each gene vector. This is done by transfection of a packaging cell line with the gene of interest. In order to find a high-titer retroviral vector producer clone, exhaustive clone screening is necessary, as the random integration of the transgene gives rise to different expression levels. We established a virus producing packaging cell line, the 293 FLEX, in which the viral vector is flanked by two different FRT sites and a selection trap. Using Flp recombinase mediated cassette exchange; this vector can be replaced by another compatible retroviral vector. The first step was the tagging of 293 cells with a lacZ reporter gene, which allowed screening and choosing a high expressing chromosomal locus. After checking that, a single copy of the construct was integrated, cassette exchangeability was confirmed with a reporter targeting construct. Subsequently gag-pol and GaLV envelope genes were stably transfected. The lacZ transgene was replaced by a GFP transgene and the 293 FLEX producer cell line maintained the titer, thus validating the flexibility and efficacy of this producer cell line. The tagged retroviral producer cell clone should constitute a highly advantageous cell line since it has a predictable titer and can be rapidly used for different therapeutic applications.     

Adeno-associated virus Rep78 protein and terminal repeats enhance integration of DNA sequences into the cellular genome.

Two adeno-associated virus (AAV) elements are necessary for the integration of the AAV genome: Rep78/68 proteins and inverted terminal repeats (ITRs). To study the contribution of the Rep proteins and the ITRs in the process of integration, we have compared the integration efficiencies of three different plasmids containing a green fluorescent protein (GFP) expression cassette. In one plasmid, no viral sequences were present; a second plasmid contained AAV ITRs flanking the reporter gene (integration cassette), and a third plasmid consisted of an integration cassette plus a Rep78 expression cassette. One day after transfection of 293 cells, fluorescent cells were sorted by flow cytometry and plated at 1 cell per well. Two weeks after sorting, colonies were monitored for stable expression of GFP. Transfection with the GFP plasmid containing no viral sequences resulted in no stable fluorescent colonies. Transfection with the plasmid containing the integration cassette alone (GFP flanked by ITRs) produced stable fluorescent colonies at a frequency of 5.3% +/- 1.0% whereas transfection with the plasmid containing both the integration cassette and Rep78 expression cassette produced stable fluorescent colonies at a frequency of 47% +/- 7.5%. Southern blot analysis indicated that in the presence of Rep78, integration is targeted to the AAVSI site in more than 50% of the clones analyzed. Some clones also showed tandem arrays of the integrated GFP cassette. Both head-to-head and head-to-tail orientations were detected. These findings indicate that the presence of AAV ITRs and the Rep78 protein enhance the integration of DNA sequences into the cellular genome and that the integration cassette is targeted to AAVS1 in the presence of Rep78.     

Productivity and Quality of Recombinant Proteins Produced by Stable CHO Cell Clones can be Predicted by Transient Expression in HEK Cells

Selection of lead candidates in drug discovery is a complex and time-consuming process. Here, we describe an approach that allows prediction of the productivity and quality of recombinant proteins by stable producer cell clones with the help of transient transfection studies. This is exemplified for three distinct bispecific T cell engager (BiTE^®)—a new class of single-chain antibody-based therapeutics showing very promising results in the treatment of cancer. BiTE^® titers of transiently transfected HEK cells showed a striking correlation with titers of selected stable CHO cell clones. Likewise, the percentage of the monomeric BiTE^® fraction in cell culture supernatants correlated well between transiently expressing HEK and stably expressing CHO cell clones. This validates the use of transient transfection studies for the selection of biopharmaceutical lead candidates with desired pharmaceutical properties.     

Quantitative monitoring for secreted production of human interleukin-2 in stable insect Drosophila S2 cells using a green fluorescent protein fusion partner

Human interleukin-2 (hIL-2) production in Escherichia coli and insect cell/baculovirus expression systems can be inefficient. Here we investigated secreted production of hIL-2 fused with green fluorescent protein (GFP) as a versatile fusion partner in optimized stably transfected insect Drosophila melanogaster S2 cells. This nonlytic S2 insect cell expression system employs a plasmid vector and allows for secretion of functional human proteins. We report that, following stable transfection and induction, S2 cells secreted hIL-2 as a fusion protein (approximately 2.3 microg/mL yield), with a secretion efficiency of approximately 90%. Regression analysis indicated a single linear relationship existed between GFP fluorescence and hIL-2 mass in both whole cell and secreted medium samples, indicating that in vivo monitoring and quantification of target foreign protein expression and even secretion is possible using this system. The simple comparative measurement of GFP fluorescence also allowed monitoring of secretion efficiency during periods of high GFP/hIL-2 expression.     

Fluorescent labeling in semi-solid medium for selection of mammalian cells secreting high-levels of recombinant proteins

Background  

Despite the powerful impact in recent years of gene expression markers like the green fluorescent protein (GFP) to link the expression of recombinant protein for selection of high producers, there is a strong incentive to develop rapid and efficient methods for isolating mammalian cell clones secreting high levels of marker-free recombinant proteins. Recently, a method combining cell colony growth in methylcellulose-based medium with detection by a fluorescently labeled secondary antibody or antigen has shown promise for the selection of Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) cell lines secreting recombinant antibodies. Here we report an extension of this method referred to as fluorescent labeling in semi-solid medium (FLSSM) to detect recombinant proteins significantly smaller than antibodies, such as IGF-E5, a 25 kDa insulin-like growth factor derivative.     

Mycobacterial shuttle vectors designed for high-level protein expression in infected macrophages

Mycobacterial shuttle vectors contain dual origins of replication for growth in both Escherichia coli and mycobacteria. One such vector, pSUM36, was re-engineered for high-level protein expression in diverse bacterial species. The modified vector (pSUM-kan-MCS2) enabled green fluorescent protein expression in E. coli, Mycobacterium smegmatis, and M. avium at levels up to 50-fold higher than that detected with the parental vector, which was originally developed with a lacZα promoter. This high-level fluorescent protein expression allowed easy visualization of M. smegmatis and M. avium in infected macrophages. The M. tuberculosis gene esat-6 was cloned in place of the green fluorescence protein gene (gfp) to determine the impact of ESAT-6 on the innate inflammatory response. The modified vector (pSUM-kan-MCS2) yielded high levels of ESAT-6 expression in M. smegmatis. The ability of ESAT-6 to suppress innate inflammatory pathways was assayed with a novel macrophage reporter cell line, designed with an interleukin-6 (IL-6) promoter-driven GFP cassette. This stable cell line fluoresces in response to diverse mycobacterial strains and stimuli, such as lipopolysaccharide. M. smegmatis clones expressing high levels of ESAT-6 failed to attenuate IL-6-driven GFP expression. Pure ESAT-6, produced in E. coli, was insufficient to suppress a strong inflammatory response elicited by M. smegmatis or lipopolysaccharide, with ESAT-6 itself directly activating the IL-6 pathway. In summary, a pSUM-protein expression vector and a mammalian IL-6 reporter cell line provide new tools for understanding the pathogenic mechanisms deployed by various mycobacterial species.     

Expression of antibodies using single open reading frame (sORF) vector design

Efficient production of large quantities of therapeutic antibodies is becoming a major goal of the pharmaceutical industry. We developed a proprietary expression system using a polyprotein precursor-based approach to antibody expression in mammalian cells. In this approach, the coding regions for heavy and light chains are included within a single open reading frame (sORF) separated by an in-frame intein gene. A single mRNA and subsequent polypeptide are produced upon transient and stable transfection into HEK293 and CHO cells, respectively. Heavy and light chains are separated by the autocatalytic action of the intein and antibody processing proceeds to produce active, secreted antibody. Here, we report advances in sORF technology toward establishment of a viable manufacturing platform for therapeutic antibodies in CHO cells. Increasing expression levels and improving antibody processing by intein and signal peptide selection are discussed.