用于重组蛋白生产的哺乳动物细胞表达新技术

近年来,用于重组蛋白生产的哺乳动物细胞表达领域涌现出一系列革命性的新技术。优化的工程细胞为表达重组蛋白提供了优良的宿主;基于荧光的筛选方法可以快捷地得到高表达细胞株;高通量的培养工艺能够预测适合外源蛋白表达的细胞培养条件;可抛弃式生物反应器为大规模细胞培养提供了更多的选择;大规模瞬时表达技术节省了重组蛋白的生产时间。这些新技术提高了重组蛋白的研发和生产效率,加快了蛋白药物的工业化进程。     

哺乳动物细胞灌流培养工艺研究进展

当前生物制药领域,由于成本压力、市场需求急剧波动以及生物仿制药的竞争日益激烈,现有的生物制造技术受到诸多挑战,生物技术公司越来越倾向于开发灵活、高效的创新型生产制造工艺。灌流培养作为当前哺乳动物细胞培养的重要工艺之一,不仅可以通过不断移出副产物和添加营养物来提供有利于细胞的稳定环境,以解决蛋白质量不稳定或者表达量偏低等问题,还可以通过提高单位体积产率来优化产能利用率并提高生产效率。通过系统介绍灌流培养用于哺乳动物细胞培养的研究进展,为其进一步开发与应用提供参考。     

供求信息

默克密理博北京清大天一科技有限公现有10L、60L、120L、650L、1200L、4000L等一系列规格的CLAVORUS生物反应器。从2008年至今,已为数家生物制药企业进行工艺技术的研发和优化,并成功地运用到实际生产。CLAVORUS生物反应器的设计充分体现动物细胞大规模培养技术的特点：管道布局简洁,工艺管路上的气动阀门及排放终端均选用进口产品;选材优质,确保反应器运行的可靠性和稳定性;控制系统为液晶触屏显示,预留计算机接口,可实现远程在线监控。公司规模化生产基础细胞培养基、无血清培养基,可为客户量身打造个性化培养基。强大的研发团队支持良好的服务,让客户无忧无虑使用CLAVORUS生物反应器。     

高通量灌流培养模型在生物工艺开发中的应用研究

近年来,连续型细胞培养由于其高单位体积产量、稳定的产品质量属性以及潜在的成本节约效应正成为生物大分子制药生产的工艺焦点。相比传统的流加培养模式,灌流培养因培养的连续性、操作的复杂性,致使其反应器规模培养需消耗大量培养基,产生更高人力成本,不能满足当今加速化高效化的工艺开发需求。为获得稳健的灌流培养工艺并控制较低成本,高通量灌流培养模型被用于批量化的小规模灌流培养,进行灌流培养前期的克隆筛选、培养基筛选及工艺参数优化等工作,为后期大规模培养提供实用性数据支持,同时也被用于预测大规模培养的细胞表型和产品质量属性。重点介绍了当前高通量系统包括摇瓶/摇管系统、多平行自动化系统以及微流控体系用作灌流培养的特征、具体应用及比较,同时论述当前高通量灌流培养系统在生物工艺领域发展所面临的机遇及挑战,并展望其应用前景。     

高通量灌流培养模型在生物工艺开发中的应用研究

近年来,连续型细胞培养由于其高单位体积产量、稳定的产品质量属性以及潜在的成本节约效应正成为生物大分子制药生产的工艺焦点。相比传统的流加培养模式,灌流培养因培养的连续性、操作的复杂性,致使其反应器规模培养需消耗大量培养基,产生更高人力成本,不能满足当今加速化高效化的工艺开发需求。为获得稳健的灌流培养工艺并控制较低成本,高通量灌流培养模型被用于批量化的小规模灌流培养,进行灌流培养前期的克隆筛选、培养基筛选及工艺参数优化等工作,为后期大规模培养提供实用性数据支持,同时也被用于预测大规模培养的细胞表型和产品质量属性。重点介绍了当前高通量系统包括摇瓶/摇管系统、多平行自动化系统以及微流控体系用作灌流培养的特征、具体应用及比较,同时论述当前高通量灌流培养系统在生物工艺领域发展所面临的机遇及挑战,并展望其应用前景。     

植物细胞培养生物反应器的种类特点及展望

生物反应器技术应用于植物细胞培养既可以打破环境条件的限制,又有助于生产过程的人为调控,为植物细胞大规模培养或工厂化直接生产植物细胞有用代谢产物创造了条件,是当前植物细胞培养工作的研究热点。在介绍植物细胞培养特点的基础上,对适用于植物细胞培养的各类生物反应器(搅拌式生物反应器、非搅拌式生物反应器、用于植物细胞固定化培养的生物反应器、光生物反应器以及一次性培养生物反应器)的原理、优缺点等进行比较分析,最后提出了植物细胞培养生物反应器研究的发展方向,以期为植物细胞培养生物反应器的选择及改良提供参考。     

默克集团收购中国本土公司北京清大天一科技有限公司

2011年1月6日．德国默克集团在德国达姆施塔特宣布以100％股份全额收购北京清大天一科技有限公司。 清大天一科技有限公司是中国生物制药行业领先的细胞培养基、生物反应器和细胞大规模培养技术服务的供应商。公司总部坐落于北京市昌平区．目前拥有员工80余名。     

国产生物反应器大规模高密度培养Vero细胞

本文考察了在2．5LcelliGen细胞培养器和国产20LcellCul-20细胞培养生物反应器中采用微载体技术培养细胞的情况。分析了用cellcul-20细胞培养生物反应器进行大规模培养时细胞的生长、代谢规律,研究了从2．5L扩大到20L规模的细胞转移条件。采用微载体球间直接转移技术。提高了接种效率,减少了接种步骤和污染机会。当国产GT一25微载体用量为5g／L,采用连续灌注工艺培养vero细胞,在国产20L cellCul—20细胞培养生物反应器中,连续培养5天,细胞数增加7倍,细胞密度超过1．0×10⁷ cells／m】。本文开发的细胞培养工艺,对于中试及工业规模的动物细胞大量培养具有一定的指导意义。     

植物生物反应器制药的现状及展望

随着生命科学的发展以及基因工程和分子生物学技术的迅速崛起,人们能够利用不同生物体作为"工厂"生产出可供治疗人类疾病和具有保健功能的产品,即生物制药。目前使用的生物反应器平台有细菌、酵母、昆虫细胞、哺乳动物细胞和植物表达系统,其中以植物为平台的生物反应器以其技术操作简单和成本较低越来越受到人们的青睐。就植物生物反应器在生物制药领域的应用、存在的问题以及可以采取的改进措施进行了概述。同时针对目前生物制药发展的趋势,对植物生物反应器的应用及推广进行了展望。     

微小型生物反应器及其在生物医药领域的应用展望

微小型生物反应器体积微小但在线分析检测和过程控制功能媲美台式装备。其核心支撑技术包括一次性材料及微加工技术、非接触式光学传感器、自动化以及实验设计 (DOE)、数据分析软件与过程控制的整合。由于体积微小、湍流程度和单位能耗较低,微小型反应器内的混合、传质、剪切特性与工业规模设备有一定的区别。现阶段微小型生物反应器主要用于菌株和细胞系筛选和工艺优化,在实现高通量工艺的同时确保了数据的丰度,对缩短研发周期和加速产品上市,尤其是在应对突发性传染性疾病方面有着重要的意义。未来,精准医疗概念的落实也依赖功能柔性化的微小型生物反应器系统。     

Characterization of TAP Ambr 250 disposable bioreactors,as a reliable scale‐down model for biologics process development

Demands for development of biological therapies is rapidly increasing, as is the drive to reduce time to patient. In order to speed up development, the disposable Automated Microscale Bioreactor (Ambr 250) system is increasingly gaining interest due to its advantages, including highly automated control, high throughput capacity, and short turnaround time. Traditional early stage upstream process development conducted in 2 ‐ 5 L bench‐top bioreactors requires high foot‐print, and running cost. The establishment of the Ambr 250 as a scale‐down model leads to many benefits in process development. In this study, a comprehensive characterization of mass transfer coefficient (k_La) in the Ambr 250 was conducted to define optimal operational conditions. Scale‐down approaches, including dimensionless volumetric flow rate (vvm), power per unit volume (P/V) and k_La have been evaluated using different cell lines. This study demonstrates that the Ambr 250 generated comparable profiles of cell growth and protein production, as seen at 5‐L and 1000‐L bioreactor scales, when using k_La as a scale‐down parameter. In addition to mimicking processes at large scales, the suitability of the Ambr 250 as a tool for clone selection, which is traditionally conducted in bench‐top bioreactors, was investigated. Data show that cell growth, productivity, metabolite profiles, and product qualities of material generated using the Ambr 250 were comparable to those from 5‐L bioreactors. Therefore, Ambr 250 can be used for clone selection and process development as a replacement for traditional bench‐top bioreactors minimizing resource utilization during the early stages of development in the biopharmaceutical industry. © 2017 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Biotechnol. Prog., 33:478–489, 2017     

Engineering characterisation of a single well from 24-well and 96-well microtitre plates

The detailed engineering characterisation of shaken microtitre-plate bioreactors will enhance our understanding of microbial and mammalian cell culture in these geometries and will provide guidance on the scale-up of microwell results to laboratory and pilot scale stirred bioreactors. In this work computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is employed to provide a detailed characterisation of fluid mixing, energy dissipation rate and mass transfer in single well bioreactors from deep square 24-well and 96-well microtitre plates. The numerical predictions are generally found to be in good agreement with experimental observation of the fluid motion and measured values of the key engineering parameters. The CFD simulations have shown that liquid mixing is more intensive in 96-well than in 24-well bioreactors due to a significant axial component to the fluid velocity. Liquid motion is strongly dependent on the orbital shaking amplitude which generally has a greater impact than the shaking frequency. Average power consumptions of 70–100 W m⁻³ and 500–1000 W m⁻³, and overall mass transfer coefficient, k_La, values of 0.005–0.028 s⁻¹ and 0.056–0.10 s⁻¹ were obtained for 24-well and 96-well bioreactors respectively at an orbital shaking amplitude of 3 mm and shaking frequencies ranging from 500 rpm to 1500 rpm. The distribution of energy dissipation rates within each bioreactor showed these to be greatest at the walls of the well for both geometries. Batch culture kinetics of E. coli DH5 showed similar maximum specific growth rates and final biomass yields in shaken 24-well and shake flask bioreactors and in stirred miniature and 20 L bioreactors at matched k_La values. The CFD simulations thus give new insights into the local and overall engineering properties of microwell bioreactor geometries and further support their use as high throughput tools for the study and optimisation of microbial and mammalian cell culture kinetics at this scale.     

Downscaling screening cultures in a multifunctional bioreactor array-on-a-chip for speeding up optimization of yeast-based lactic acid bioproduction

A key challenge for bioprocess engineering is the identification of the optimum process conditions for the production of biochemical and biopharmaceutical compounds using prokaryotic as well as eukaryotic cell factories. Shake flasks and bench-scale bioreactor systems are still the golden standard in the early stage of bioprocess development, though they are known to be expensive, time-consuming, and labor-intensive as well as lacking the throughput for efficient production optimizations. To bridge the technological gap between bioprocess optimization and upscaling, we have developed a microfluidic bioreactor array to reduce time and costs, and to increase throughput compared with traditional lab-scale culture strategies. We present a multifunctional microfluidic device containing 12 individual bioreactors (V_t = 15 µl) in a 26 mm × 76 mm area with in-line biosensing of dissolved oxygen and biomass concentration. Following initial device characterization, the bioreactor lab-on-a-chip was used in a proof-of-principle study to identify the most productive cell line for lactic acid production out of two engineered yeast strains, evaluating whether it could reduce the time needed for collecting meaningful data compared with shake flasks cultures. Results of the study showed significant difference in the strains' productivity within 3 hr of operation exhibiting a 4- to 6-fold higher lactic acid production, thus pointing at the potential of microfluidic technology as effective screening tool for fast and parallelizable industrial bioprocess development.     

A predictive high‐throughput scale‐down model of monoclonal antibody production in CHO cells

Multi‐factorial experimentation is essential in understanding the link between mammalian cell culture conditions and the glycoprotein product of any biomanufacturing process. This understanding is increasingly demanded as bioprocess development is influenced by the Quality by Design paradigm. We have developed a system that allows hundreds of micro‐bioreactors to be run in parallel under controlled conditions, enabling factorial experiments of much larger scope than is possible with traditional systems. A high‐throughput analytics workflow was also developed using commercially available instruments to obtain product quality information for each cell culture condition. The micro‐bioreactor system was tested by executing a factorial experiment varying four process parameters: pH, dissolved oxygen, feed supplement rate, and reduced glutathione level. A total of 180 micro‐bioreactors were run for 2 weeks during this DOE experiment to assess this scaled down micro‐bioreactor system as a high‐throughput tool for process development. Online measurements of pH, dissolved oxygen, and optical density were complemented by offline measurements of glucose, viability, titer, and product quality. Model accuracy was assessed by regressing the micro‐bioreactor results with those obtained in conventional 3 L bioreactors. Excellent agreement was observed between the micro‐bioreactor and the bench‐top bioreactor. The micro‐bioreactor results were further analyzed to link parameter manipulations to process outcomes via leverage plots, and to examine the interactions between process parameters. The results show that feed supplement rate has a significant effect (P < 0.05) on all performance metrics with higher feed rates resulting in greater cell mass and product titer. Culture pH impacted terminal integrated viable cell concentration, titer and intact immunoglobulin G titer, with better results obtained at the lower pH set point. The results demonstrate that a micro‐scale system can be an excellent model of larger scale systems, while providing data sets broader and deeper than are available by traditional methods. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2009; 104: 1107–1120. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Spectroscopic methods and their applicability for high‐throughput characterization of mammalian cell cultures in automated cell culture systems

The number and use of automated cell culture systems for mammalian cell culture are steadily increasing. Automated cell culture systems require miniaturized analytics with a high throughput to obtain as much information as possible from single experiments. Standard analytics commonly used for conventional bioreactor samples cannot handle the high throughput and the low sample volumes. Spectroscopic methods provide a means of meeting this analytical requirement and afford fast and direct access to process information. In the first part of this review, UV/VIS, fluorescence, Raman, near‐infrared, and mid‐infrared spectroscopy are presented. In the second part of the review, these spectroscopic methods are evaluated in terms of their applicability in the new field of mammalian cell culture processes in automated cell culture systems. Unlike standard bioreactors, these automated systems have special requirements that apply to the use of spectroscopic methods. Therefore, they are compared with regard to cell culture automation, throughput, and required sample volume.     

Scaled-up production of mammalian neural precursor cell aggregates in computer-controlled suspension bioreactors

The clinical use of neural precursor cells (NPCs) for the treatment of neurological diseases, such as Parkinson's disease and Huntington's disease, requires overcoming the scarcity of these cells through controlled expansion. The main objective of the present study was to develop a large-scale computer-controlled bioprocess for the expansion of mammalian NPCs in suspension culture by scaling up existing reactor protocols. In order to support the oxygen demands of the maximum cell densities achieved, the volumetric mass transfer coefficient was kept above 1.10/h while scaling-up from small-scale 125 mL vessels to large-scale 500 mL bioreactors. In addition, the maximum shear stress at the impeller tip was maintained between 0.30 and 0.75 Pa to reduce damage to the cells. The resulting large-scale bioprocess achieved maximum viable cell densities of 1.2 x 10(6) cells/mL and a batch multiplication ratio of 9.1. Moreover, the process successfully maintained the NPC characteristics observed in small-scale studies.     

Packed-bed bioreactors for mammalian cell culture: bioprocess and biomedical applications

This article describes the development history of packed-bed bioreactors (PBRs) used for the culture of mammalian cells. It further reviews the current applications of PBRs and discusses the steps forward in the development of these systems for bioprocess and biomedical applications. The latest generation of PBRs used in bioprocess applications achieve very high cell densities (>10(8) cells ml(-1)) leading to outstandingly high volumetric productivity. However, a major bottleneck of such PBRs is their relatively small volume. The current maximal volume appears to be in the range of 10 to 30 l. A scale-up of more than 10-fold would be necessary for these PBRs to be used in production processes. In biomedical applications, PBRs have proved themselves as compact bioartificial organs, but their metabolic activity declines frequently within 1 to 2 weeks of operation. A main challenge in this field is to develop cell lines that grow consistently to high cell density in vitro and maintain a stable phenotype for a minimum of 1 to 2 months. Achieving this will greatly enhance the usefulness of PBR technology in clinical practice.     

Apoptosis: A mammalian cell bioprocessing perspective

Apoptosis is a form of programmed and controlled cell death that accounts for the majority of cellular death in bioprocesses. Cell death affects culture longevity and product quality; it is instigated by several stresses experienced by the cells within a bioreactor. Understanding the factors that cause apoptosis as well as developing strategies that can protect cells is crucial for robust bioprocess development. This review aims to a) address apoptosis from a bioprocess perspective; b) describe the significant apoptotic mechanisms linking them to the most relevant stresses encountered in bioreactors; c) discuss the design of operating conditions in order to avoid cell death; d) focus on industrially relevant cell lines; and e) present anti-apoptosis strategies including cell engineering and model-based optimization of bioprocesses. In addition, the importance of apoptosis in quality-by-design bioprocess development from clone screening to production scale are highlighted.     

High density cell culture by membrane-based cell recycle

Enhancement of productivity of a bioprocess necessitates continuous operation of bioreactors with high biomass concentrations than are possible in conventional batch, fedbatch or continuous modes of culture. Membrane-based cell recycle has been effectively used to maintain high cell concentrations in bioreactors. This review compares membranebased cell recycle operation with other such high density cell culture systems as immobilized cell reactors and reactors with cell recycle by centrifugation or gravity sedimentation. A theoretical of production of primary and secondary metabolites in membrane-based recycle systems is presented. Operation of this type of system is discussed with examples from aerobic and anaerobic fermentations.     

25 years of recombinant proteins from reactor-grown cells - Where do we go from here?

The purpose of this review is to describe the current status and to highlight several emerging trends in the manufacture of recombinant therapeutic proteins in cultivated mammalian cells, focusing on Chinese hamster ovary cells as the major production host. Over the past 25 years, specific and volumetric productivities for recombinant cell lines have increased about 20-fold as the result of improvements in media and bioprocess design. Future yield increases are expected to come from further developments in gene delivery and genetic selection for more efficient recovery of high-producing cell lines and in high-throughput cultivation systems to simplify medium design and bioprocess development. Other emerging trends in protein manufacturing that are discussed include the use of disposal bioreactors and transient gene expression. We specifically highlight current research in our own laboratories.