When CHO cells are used to produce recombinant-protein drugs, they can also produce many other unwanted proteins. Although these are removed during purification, they add to manufacturing costs and reduce efficiency. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, and the Technical University of Denmark have published a paper showing how they used “multiplex secretome engineering” to increase recombinant protein production and purity (1).
The work builds on prior computational work showing that a relatively small number of unwanted proteins account for the majority of cell energy and resources (1). This inspired the researchers to eliminate the dominant contaminating proteins to free up cellular resources.
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References
- S Kol at al., “Multiplex secretome engineering enhances recombinant protein production and purity,” Nature Communications, 11 (2020).
