Insulin study poster
Optimization of HEK 293 cell growth by addition of non-animal derived components using design of experiments
Improving Influenza virus production in HEK293 cell culture supplemented with animal-free insulin
Mammalian cells are a widely used expression platform for the production of recombinant therapeutic proteins or viral particle-based vaccines since they typically perform appropriate protein post-translational modifications and authentic viral particle assembly. Of the available mammalian cells, HEK 293 is one of the most industrially relevant cell lines because it is cGMP compliant and is able to grow in suspension in a variety of serum-free media. Of note, the production of human therapeutics in mammalian cell culture has become more and more stringent in recent years and demands not only serum-free but also animal-component-free production conditions to ensure safety.
The aim of this project was to optimize HEK 293 cell growth by the addition of non-animal derived components to serum-free and protein-free media through the design of experiments (DoE) in order to maximize the productivity of a recombinant VLP vaccine by PEI-mediated transient transfection. We have analyzed the kinetics of HEK 293 cell growth in Medium 1. The cells grow to a maximum concentration of ~ 3 106 cells/ml with over 90% viability and show an average doubling time of 24 h.In addition, we have evaluated cell growth in two other commercial serum-free culture media (Medium 2 and Medium 3) that are also compatible with PEI-mediated transient transfection, observing similar cell growth compared to those obtained in Medium 1.
We have evaluated the effect of foetal bovine sera (FBS) in these serum-free culture media. Cells can triplicate their maximum cell densities (9,3 106 cells/ml) in the presence of 10% FBS. Due to the important effect of serum on HEK 293 cell growth, we decided to evaluate the effect of non-animal-derived serum components on cell growth in an attempt to improve cell densities while keeping animal-free production conditions. For these studies, we have selected 3 recombinant proteins(albumin, transferrin and insulin) and an in-house lipid mix composed of synthetic cholesterol, fatty acids, tocopherol and emulsifying agents. The optimal combination of these components inthe final formulation has been determined by using DoE.
