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Fast and relatively inexpensive method of generating mutant hosts, increased production yields, no switching costs as the same production process is used.
About
What is the problem? Recombinant protein production (RPP) is central to bio -pharmaceutical manufacture, Obtaining high protein yields and purity is essential in order to increase product speed to market while lowering associated costs. Unfortunately, protein yields are often insufficient by the end of the development phase, necessitating further time and investment. Our new Solution? A panel of hyper-producing mutant hosts providing robust expression, high quality yields of proteins of various origins. Benefits of the new technology Fast and relatively inexpensive method of generating mutant hosts, increased production yields, no switching costs as the same production process is used. Background The move from lab to commercial production of proteins is most often achieved by simply increasing scale, for example by using larger bioreactor volumes, while the more economically viable option would be to increase production capacity of the host. The ultimate goal for industry is to have an access to a panel of hyper-producing mutant hosts providing robust expression, high yields and quality of the proteins of various origins. This innovation provides the potential to generate such strains, including those ‘difficult’ protein that industry has been trying and failing to produce by using existing hosts and routine methods. This can now be achieved by applying novel methods of laboratory evolution and high-throughput screening for identification and isolation of mutants from the population with improved RPP properties. These methods can be applied to any protein/strain combination including cytoplasmic and secreted proteins and different production platforms. Our technology of hyper-producing mutant generation has stemmed from a novel observation in E.coli. This observation allows us to select out strains, which cause growth arrest, plasmid loss and outgrowth of non-producer populations in the culture, which results in cessation of RPP, poor protein yields and low conformational quality. Selected strains have been shown to become ‘stress-resistant’ and exhibit enhanced RPP compared to the parental strain.