Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering Commons^™

Mammalian Systems Biotechnology: An Integrative Framework For Combining In Silico Modeling And Multi-Omics Datasets In Different Cho Parental Cell Lines, Dong Yup Lee, Sarantos Kyriakopoulos, Meiyappan Lakshmanan, Kok Siong Ang, Alison Lee, Xuezhi Bi, Andy Tan, Ying Swan Ho, Peiqing Zhang, Yuansheng Yang, Say Kong Ng

Cell Culture Engineering XV

The increasing availability of multi-omics data from Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cell cultures entails both opportunity and challenges toward next generation cell culture engineering. Herein, we present a comprehensive and integrative framework to systematically combine trancriptome, proteome, metabolome and glycome datasets in conjunction with a genome-scale metabolic model of CHO cells. We then apply the framework to compare and contrast the metabolic characteristics of the three commonly used parental cell lines (CHO-K1, CHO-DUKXB11 and CHO-DG44) so that “global” attributes of the parental hosts (e.g. growth related characteristics, glycosylation patterns, etc.) could be highlighted (Figure 1).

The unique characteristics of the …

A Quality By Design (Qbd) Approach To Cell Culture Process Characterization, Melissa Mun

Cell Culture Engineering XV

Quality by Design (QbD) is a science- and risk-based approach to development that begins with predefined objectives and emphasizes product and process understanding as well as process control. This case study will describe a QbD approach to characterizing a monoclonal antibody (MAb) cell culture process. Process parameters to study were selected through a risk ranking and filtering assessment based on historical development data, manufacturing history, and scientific understanding. Statistically designed, multifactor process characterization studies were performed in scale-down bioreactors to build understanding of parameter impacts on critical quality attributes (CQAs) and key performance indicators (KPIs). Production culture process characterization studies, …

Biological Relevance Of Yap Regulation By Wnt Signaling During Neural Tissue Patterning Of Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells, Yan Li

Cell Culture Engineering XV

Human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) have special ability to self-assemble into neural microtissues or mini-organ like structures (e.g., mini-brains). In this process, Wnt signaling impacts regional patterning and positional identity of hiPSC-derived neural progenitors. One important function of Wnt signaling is to regulate Yes-associated protein (YAP) expression (nuclear or cytoplasmic), the pivotal regulator of cell proliferation and differentiation during organ growth and tissue generation. However, the crosstalk between Wnt and YAP expression during neural differentiation of hiPSCs has not been well investigated. The objective of this study is to reveal the capability of Wnt signaling in the regulation of …

Industrialization Of Adenoviral Vector Production In Fixed Bed Bioreactor And Amplification Of Primary Liver Cells In Xpansion® Bioreactor: Autologous Insulin Producing Cells For The Treatment Of Diabetes, From Bench To Clinical Scale, Rachel Legmann

Cell Culture Engineering XV

Diabetes is a major global health problem with over 370 million diabetics and an estimated 550 million by 2030. Current therapies rely on recombinant insulin injection to the patients several times a day to control glucose level but do not address the fundamental problem; the loss of insulin producing cells of the pancreas. Orgenesis developed a cell therapy to replace these cells by taking a small biopsy from a patient’s liver, growing the cells in flatware treating these cells with adenovirus vectors containing the genes required to transdifferentiate them to insulin producing cells. This approach allows the diabetic patient to …

Effect Of Cell-Surface Interactions On Monocyte-Derived Immunotherapy Products, Corinne Hoesli

Cell Culture Engineering XV

Monocyte-based cellular therapy products have been approved by the FDA for immunotherapy applications. The transition from a research and preclinical setting to the clinic is typically associated with a shift open culture systems such as polystyrene flasks to closed cell culture systems. Closed systems such as fluoropolymer-based bags offer benefits from a handling and safety perspective. However, the interactions between cells and fluoropolymer surfaces may differ from polystyrene surfaces. Differences between the physicochemical properties of the materials may profoundly impact the type and conformations of the proteins adsorbing to the surfaces. In turn, differences in the protein adlayer formed on …

Non-Invasive Real-Time Monitoring Of Glucose And Lactate By Nir-Spectroscopy During Perfusion Cho Culture, Jean Hamel, Anita Wamakima, Ruifan Pei

Cell Culture Engineering XV

Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIR) has been used to monitor glycerol and methanol, non-invasively during cultures of Pichia pastoris^{1, 2}. In this work, glucose and lactate were measured in Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) perfusion culture, in real time, using an online advanced NIR monitor and a reference offline biochemical analyzer. The 1.8-L culture started in the batch phase at 4 g/L glucose with 0.3 x 10⁶ cells/mL and reached 1.5 x 10⁶ cells/mL after 90 hours. Perfusion was then initiated and conducted for 10 days at 0.7 vvd, using a spiral membrane-less microfluidic device³. The maximum …

Development Of Chemically-Defined, Animal Component-Free Medium For Suspension Mdck Cell-Based Influenza Vaccine Production, Jenny Bang

Cell Culture Engineering XV

Cell culture-based vaccine production is advantageous over chicken eggs-based production because it does not rely on the availability of eggs and can be performed on a larger scale in a timely manner. Madin-Darby canine kidney (MDCK) cells are favorably used for vaccine production, particularly for influenza vaccines. However, there are several drawbacks to the traditional method of culturing MDCK cells. MDCK cells require undefined supplement for culturing, such as serum or hydrolysates which pose regulatory concerns especially when making pharmaceutical products for human use. Furthermore, MDCK cells grow in adherent culture which requires significant surface area or the use of …

Neural Patterning Of Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells For Studying Neurotoxicity, Yan Li, Yuanwei Yan

Cell Culture Engineering XV

Existing models using adult human neural stem cells have the restricted access. Human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) can generate allogeneic or patient-specific neural cells/tissues and even mini-brains to provide robust in vitro models for applications in drug discovery, neurological disease modeling, and cell therapy. Toward this goal, the objective of this study is to construct 3-D neural models from hiPSCs through the scalable embryoid body-based suspension culture which can generate cortical glutamatergic neurons and motor neurons by tuning the sonic hedgehog (SHH) signaling. The differentiation of human iPSK3 cells was induced using dual inhibition of SMAD signaling with LDN193189 …

Genomics Based Methodology Of Cell-Culturemedia Formulation For Improved Biotherapeutic Productivity And Quality Consistency, Hemlata Bhatia, Seongkyu Yoon

Cell Culture Engineering XV

Biosimilar drugs are emerging very fast as the patents of innovator’s drugs are expiring. Media formulation development has to be carried out for each biosimilar, which takes up a significant amount of time and generally, a random approach is taken to meet comparability requirement and improve the product titer. A targeted approach with genome information of host cell as a function of media composition can provide useful information to explain the product titer variability and comparability. A 2-step correlation model explaining relationship between cell-culture productivity and quality, and media compositions taking gene expression as intermediate attributes can provide a precise …

Towards Integrated Continuous Viral Vaccines Production Using Two-Stage Bioreactor Systems, Felipe Tapia

Cell Culture Engineering XV

Typically, many cell culture-derived viral vaccines are being produced in batch processes. However, with increasing demands of a growing world population for potent, safe and affordable vaccines, manufacturing technologies need to be further optimized. In particular, the establishment of two-stage bioreactors appears as an interesting option for continuous production of viral vaccines. In these systems cell growth and virus propagation are being performed in separated vessels [1], which make them suitable for production of lytic viruses, such as influenza and Modified Vaccinia Ankara virus (MVA). MVA virus has received much clinical attention, because it is as a promising vector candidate …

Evaluation Of Public Genome References For Rna-Seq Data Analysis In Chinese Hamster Ovary Cells, Huong Le, Chun Chen, Chetan Goudar

Cell Culture Engineering XV

Recent advances in next-generation sequencing technologies have led to the emergence of RNA-Seq as the preferred transcriptomic tool in the biopharmaceutical industry. However, an important challenge with deploying RNA-Seq to characterize CHO cells is the absence of a common genomic reference for this species. In most published CHO cell transcriptomic studies, RNA-Seq reads are assembled into de novo genomic references which were subsequently used for mapping of the constituent reads. Such an approach makes it difficult to compare results across studies due to the incomplete and non-universal nature of those assemblies. To address this challenge, we evaluated two publicly available …

Elucidating Cell Line And Tissue Differences Derived From Cricetulus Griseus By Transcriptomics And Proteomics, Kelley Heffner

Cell Culture Engineering XV

Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells derived from Cricetulus griseus remain the dominant host for recombinant protein production. This project aims to expand our knowledge by conducting transcriptomics and proteomics experiments on CHO cell lines and Chinese hamster tissues in order to obtain a larger set of genetic engineering targets for improving bioprocess development. This study will increase data sets using cell line comparisons and investigate how mRNA and protein levels change from Chinese hamster lineage. Quantitative ‘omics data from CHO cell lines and Chinese hamster tissues data was obtained by RNAseq (transcriptome) and labeled tandem mass tag mass spectrometry (proteome). …

Scaling Microcarrier-Based Cell Expansion Processes, Mark Szczypka

Cell Culture Engineering XV

Therapies utilizing stem cells isolated from various tissues are currently undergoing clinical evaluation. It is predicted that for many indications large quantities of cells will be required to treat the numbers of patients in need of therapy. This requirement represents a challenge because the surface area needed to generate the projected numbers of cells is significant. Microcarriers are a viable platform to meet the surface area requirement for generation of the predicted number of cells.

One challenge when transitioning to larger reactors is the identification of agitation conditions that allow for good suspension of the microcarriers and sufficient kLa and …

Process Intensification Of Perfusion: To Steady-State, Or Unsteady-State, That Is The Question, Henry Lin

Cell Culture Engineering XV

Recent advances in process intensification of perfusion cell culture have diverged into two general modes of operation. One focuses on the conventional steady-state concept of maintaining constant high cell density over a lengthier culture duration, and the other focuses on a much more intensified non-steady state cell density, at times reaching >100e⁶ cells/mL. The latter has been coined concentrated fed-batch and the former continuous perfusion. Several underlying characteristics differentiate the two modes. In the steady-state approach, cell bleed is required and the cell density typically can range from 20 to 50e⁶ cells/mL. Culture duration of 30 days or …

Perfusion Media Development And Evaluation With Spin Tube And Ambr15 Highthroughput Small-Scale Models, Yang Wang, Shawn Barrett, Borka Naumovich, Jessica Nichols, Steve Gorfien

Cell Culture Engineering XV

For over 75 years, continuous manufacturing has been investigated in both academia and industry as an alternative to batch manufacturing. Perfusion is a well-recognized method for continuous production of biomolecules expressed in CHO cell culture and it is known to have certain advantages over batch and fed‑batch processes. The major advantage of perfusion processes is that a constant environment is provided to cells through continuous by-product removal and nutrient addition. However, it has proven to be challenging to apply high-throughput approaches routinely used in fed-batch process development while maintaining true continuous culture, and so semi-continuous methods have instead been pursued …

Pcl-Pdms-Pcl Copolymer-Based Microspheres Mediate Cardiovascular Differentiation From Embryonic Stem Cells, Yan Li

Cell Culture Engineering XV

Poly-ϵ-caprolactone (PCL) based copolymers have received much attention as drug or growth factor delivery carriers and tissue engineering scaffolds due to their biocompatibility, biodegradability, and tunable biophysical properties. Copolymers of PCL and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) also have shape memory behaviors and can be made into thermoresponsive shape memory polymers for various biomedical applications such as smart sutures and vascular stents. However, the influence of biophysical properties of PCL-PDMS-PCL copolymers on stem cell lineage commitment has not been well understood. In this study, PDMS was used as soft segments of varying length to tailor the biophysical properties of PCL (hard segments)-based co-polymers. …

Biotherapeutic Development In The 'Omics Age: The Cho Genome And Beyond, Chapman Wright, Joost Groot, Scott Estes

Cell Culture Engineering XV

The Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) revolution has had a profound effect on the manner in which we approach the fields of biology and medicine, but the effects are not limited to these fields alone. With the process of collecting and analyzing large datasets becoming more seamless, a growing number of disciplines are incorporating NGS and other ‘Omics technologies into their workflow. Biotherapeutic development is one such field that is benefitting from the comprehensive and rich datasets that NGS can provide. At Biogen, we are using NGS in two ways: to provide a deeper understanding CHO cell biology during bioprocessing and to …

An Innovative Protein Delivery System For Therapeutic Cells, Jean Pascal Lepetit

Cell Culture Engineering XV

Cell therapy has been on the rise in recent years. It consists in the treatment of therapeutic cells to be transferred to human patients, and is applied in multiple pathologies such as hemophilia or muscular dystrophies. Several cell treatment solutions are currently developed, including the use of transcription factors or genome editing technologies. These ex vivo technologies often require gene transfer to express the therapeutic protein in the treated cells. The genes are delivered mainly by transfection or viral transduction, causing regulatory limitations for clinical studies.

A promising strategy is to avoid the use of nucleic acids by direct delivery …

Agitation Strategies For The Culture And Detachment Of Human Mesenchymal Stem Cells (Hmscs) From Microcarriers In Multiple Bioreactor Platforms, Alvin Nienow

Cell Culture Engineering XV

Unlike cell culture for biopharmaceuticals, where the product of interest is usually a recombinant protein, for regenerative medicine, the cells form the basis of the therapeutic. For the expansion of cells for allogeneic purposes, work, mainly in spinner flasks, has led to culture on microcarriers. For processes involving mass transfer and reaction with particles in stirred reactors (e.g., crystallization, catalytic reaction), it is essential that particles are at least just fully suspended, agitator speed N_JS, for effective mass transfer to and from the particles. Though gentle agitation has generally been recommended, it has not previously been defined in …

Lipidomics For Robust High Performance Process Development, Laetitia Malphettes, Gregory Mathy, Laura Gimenez

Cell Culture Engineering XV

As the biopharmaceutical industry reduces the risk of potential contaminations by adventitious agents and increases process yields, high performance cell culture processes have been developed that rely on animal-free peptide-free, protein-free chemically defined and lipid-free media. These processes rely on cell lines that have been adapted to these lipid-free production conditions and have developed very effective lipid production capacities. These lipid-production capacities result in new challenges in the harvest and purification steps such as filterability, ability to clean resins and resin reuse. This oral presentation will show case how lipidomics can provide insights and opportunities to control the interactions between …

Development Of A Process Analytical Technology (Pat) Infrastructure For Future Biologics Upstream Processing, Mathieu Steefland

Cell Culture Engineering XV

Process Analytical Technology (PAT) involves the timely analysis of Critical Quality Attributes (CQAs) and Critical Process Parameters (CPPs) with the aim to improve the process control strategy resulting in a better process performance and robust product quality. The progress of PAT implementation in upstream bioprocessing has been slow mainly due to the complexity of the process steps with many parameters involved, and the complexity of the product and the culture medium. While the first approved PAT-based Real Time Release application in the small molecules field already celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2016, PAT for upstream bioprocessing is only now maturing. …

Cell-Derived Microparticles For Cell Therapy, Cargo Delivery, And Applications In Cho-Cell Biotechnology, Terry Papoutsakis, Jinlin Jiang, Chen-Yuan Kao

Cell Culture Engineering XV

Mammalian cells release into the extracellular environment microparticles (MPs; less than 1 micron) under some stress or activation process. MPs result from direct budding off the plasma membrane, and are important in intercellular communication by transferring RNA, proteins, and lipids between cells. Cells endow their MPs with signaling or functional molecules, to target specific cell types. They enrich their MPs in specific miRNAs, piRNAs, and long ncRNAs to program or reprogram target cells towards functional differentiation or specific cellular actions. Cells also use MPs to get rid of “death molecules”, and/or promote cell survival and “renewal” of target cells. We …

Intracellular Characterization Of Gag-Gfp Vlp Production Upon Peimediated Transient Transfection Of Hek 293 Cells, Laura Cervera, Irene Gonzalez Dominguez, Mercedes Segura, Francesc Godia

Cell Culture Engineering XV

Transient Gene Expression is a fast, flexible, and cost-effective approach to produce high-quality products that circumvents the time and cost required for the generation of stably transfected cell lines. However, the levels of recombinant protein produced by TGE, tend to be significantly lower than those of stable cell lines. Despite the continued interest in transient gene expression approaches, little is known about the transfection process at intracellular level, particularly for complex products such as VLPs. The kinetics of PEI-mediated transient transfection was studied with the aim of characterizing and understanding the complete process leading to VLP generation, and identifying important …

Modeling Perfusion For Medium Component Optimization Using Ambr15tm, Deila Lyons

Cell Culture Engineering XV

An increasing number of biopharmaceutical companies are employing intensified perfusion as a means to increase volumetric productivity. Traditional perfusion systems have successfully used media developed for fed-batch cultures when target cell densities are relatively low (e.g., 20x10⁶vc/mL) and perfusion rates are relatively high (e.g., 5 vvd). High perfusion rates can be desirable when producing labile proteins in order to reduce the effective retention time of the protein in the bioreactor. Commonly, intensified perfusion processes applied in the production of stable proteins reach cell densities greater than 50x10⁶vc/mL with perfusion rates below 2vvd. In intensified perfusion, the …

Hek293 Suspension Cell Culture Platform For Production Of Viruses And Viral Vectors, Chun Shen, Sven Ansorge

Cell Culture Engineering XV

Viruses and viral vectors are extensively used as delivery systems for gene and cell therapies, oncotherapies and as vaccines or vectors for display or expression of antigens in vaccination strategies. Over many years, developments in cell culture technologies have been critical to enable mass production of viral vectors and have greatly contributed to facilitate pre-clinical and clinical trials for therapeutic applications. HEK293 is the most popular cell line for the production of adenoviruses (AdV), adeno-associated viruses (AAV), retroviruses and lentiviruses; and HEK293 cell suspension culture is the most efficient system for improved production of r-proteins and viral vectors by large-scale …

Integrated Strategies For The Production, Maturation And Storage Of Functional Cardiomyocytes Derived From Human Pluripotent Stem Cells, Claudia Correia, Paula Alves

Cell Culture Engineering XV

The production of cardiomyocytes (CM) from human pluripotent stem cells (hPSC) holds great promise for cardiotoxicity drug testing, disease modeling and cardiac regeneration [1]. However, the complex nets of signalling pathways involved in cardiomyogenesis compromises the effectiveness of the existing differentiation protocols to reproducibly produce high-quality CM from hPSC (hPSC-CM). Produced hPSC-CM are immature compared with adult CMs, express typical fetal cardiac genes, have immature electrophysiological properties and use glucose as major energy source [2]. The applicability of hPSC-CM in the clinic/industry is also dependent on the development of efficient methods for worldwide shipment of these cells. In this study …

Modelling Short-Latency Disparity-Vergence Eye Movements Under Dichoptic Unbalanced Stimulation, Agostino Gibaldi, Guido Maiello, Peter J. Bex, Silvio P. Sabatini

MODVIS Workshop

Vergence eye movements align the optical axes of our two eyes onto an object of interest, thus facilitating the binocular summation of the images projected onto the left and the right retinae into a single percept. Both the computational substrate and the functional behaviour of binocular vergence eye movements have been the topic of in depth investigation. Here, we attempt to bring together what is known about computation and function of vergence mechanism. To this aim, we evaluated of a biologically inspired model of horizontal and vertical vergence control, based on a network of V1 simple and complex cells. The …

Measuring And Modeling Shared Visual Attention, Jeffrey B. Mulligan, Patrick Gontar

MODVIS Workshop

Multi-person teams are sometimes responsible for critical tasks, such as flying an airliner. Here we present a method using gaze tracking data to assess shared visual attention, a term we use to describe the situation where team members are attending to a common set of elements in the environment. Gaze data are quantized with respect to a set of N areas of interest (AOIs); these are then used to construct a time series of N dimensional vectors, with each vector component representing one of the AOIs, all set to 0 except for the component corresponding to the currently fixated …

Challenges In The Use Of Scale-Down Models For Understanding And Mitigating Process Variations Of A Monoclonal Antibody Production Process, Peter Russo

Cell Culture Engineering XV

Scale-down models are commonly used to execute process characterization studies, as well as to screen raw materials and to conduct investigations in support of manufacturing operations. During the clinical manufacture of a monoclonal antibody, consistent product quality was maintained; however, large variations in bioreactor harvest titer (> 2X) were observed between lots. Root cause analysis of this variation did not establish a linkage between culture performance and manufacturing execution or deviations. Further, small scale satellite reactor performance displayed lesser variability; thereby eliminating seed train and raw materials as potential root causes. Small scale investigations, using multiple scale-down models, were not …

Rapid Development Of A Perfusion Process With High Productivity, Sen Xu, Linda Hoshan, Balrina Gupta, Hao Chen

Cell Culture Engineering XV

Continuous process improvement is required during a biologics process life cycle to increase process yield and reduce cost. In this poster, we will present a case study in late stage process development where everything was changed but the product quality. The following major changes were made when developing the new process:

• Production cell line – subclone of the original clone used.
• Media – from hydrolysate-containing feeds to fully chemically-defined feeds.
• Feeding strategy – from fixed volume/fixed schedule feeding to daily on-demand feeding.

Media components were optimized through spent media analysis and mechanistic understanding to accommodate the new feeding strategy. High-throughput …