ClonePix 2 Mammalian Colony Picker

Since its inception in 1975, the hybridoma technology revolutionized science and medicine, facilitating discoveries in almost any field from the laboratory to the clinic. Many technological advancements have been developed since then, to create these “magical bullets.” Phage and yeast display libraries expressing the variable heavy and light domains of antibodies, single B-cell cloning from immunized animals of different species including humans or in silico approaches, all have rendered a myriad of newly developed antibodies or improved design of existing ones. However, still the majority of these antibodies or their recombinant versions are from hybridoma origin, a preferred methodology that trespass species barriers, due to the preservation of the natural functions of immune cells in producing the humoral response: antigen specific immunoglobulins. Remarkably, this methodology can be reproduced in small laboratories without the need of sophisticate equipment. In this chapter, we will describe the most recent methods utilized by our Monoclonal Antibodies Core Facility at the University of Texas–M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. During the last 10 years, the methods, techniques, and expertise implemented in our core had generated more than 350 antibodies for various applications.

Screening and characterization of cell lines for stable production are critical tasks in identifying suitable recombinant cell lines for the manufacture of protein therapeutics. To aid this essential function we have developed a methodology for the selection of antibody expressing cells using fluorescence based ClonePix FL colony isolation and flow cytometry analysis following intracellular staining for immunoglobulin G (IgG). Our data show that characterization of cells by flow cytometry early in the clone selection process enables the identification of cell lines with the potential for high productivity and helps to eliminate unstable cell lines. We further demonstrate a correlation between specific productivity (qP) and intracellular heavy chain (HC) content with final productivity. The unique combination of screening using ClonePix FL and the flow cytometry approaches facilitated more efficient isolation of clonal cell lines with high productivity within a 15 week timeline and which can be applied across NS0 and CHO host platforms. Furthermore, in this study we describe the critical parameters for the ClonePix FL colony based selection and the associated calculations to provide an assessment of the probability of monoclonality of the resulting cell lines.

The Holy Grail sought by all Bioprocess Cell Line Development (CLD) groups is achieving high yields from easily-cultured, robustly-growing cells in timelines measured in weeks rather than months. As the first bottleneck in process development, CLD must first birth its product for upstream and downstream groups to initiate their own reproductive cycles. To facilitate shortened CLD timelines, scientists have turned to new technologies and automation platforms. Emerging high-throughput instrumentation such as Clonepix and Automated MicroBioreactors (AMBR) have been enthusiastically integrated into stable cell line generation platforms; however, application of these methodologies among users is divergent.

Therapeutic recombinant monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) are commonly produced by high-expressing, clonal, mammalian cells. Creation of these clones for manufacturing remains heavily reliant on stringent selection and gene amplification, which in turn can lead to genetic instability, variable expression, product heterogeneity and prolonged development timelines. Inclusion of cis-acting ubiquitous chromatin opening elements (UCOE™) in mammalian expression vectors has been shown to improve productivity and facilitate high-level gene expression irrespective of the chromosomal integration site without lengthy gene amplification protocols. In this study we have used high-throughput robotic clone selection in combination with UCOE™ containing expression vectors to develop a rapid, streamlined approach for early-stage cell line development and isolation of high-expressing clones for mAb production using Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells. Our results demonstrate that it is possible to go from transfection to stable clones in only 4 weeks, while achieving specific productivities exceeding 20 pg/cell/day. Furthermore, we have used this approach to quickly screen several process-crucial parameters including IgG subtype, enhancer-promoter combination and UCOE™ length. The use of UCOE™-containing vectors in combination with automated robotic selection provides a rapid method for the selection of stable, high-expressing clones.