Sartorius teams with Synpromics to increase CHO cell line stability
The deal will see Edinburgh, UK-based Synpromics develop synthetic promotors - DNA sequences that do not exist in nature - to be used with Sartorius’s CHO (Chinese Hamster Ovary).
According to Synpromics CEO David Venables, his firm’s panel of CHO specific synthetic promoters are able to enhance the stability and shorten the development timelines of the CHO cell line.
“Stable cell lines are routinely developed by the biopharma industry for the manufacture of recombinant proteins/biopharmaceuticals,” he told Biopharma-Reporter.
“Our synthetic promoter technology has been developed to increase the yields of recombinant proteins produced by these stable cell lines which has a benefit in cost of goods reduction for biopharmaceuticals. A secondary benefit is that the promoters can help reduce the lead times for the creation of stable cell lines, thereby reducing product development lead times.”
Work will be done using Synpromics’ PromPT platform - a bioinformatics database for the design, build and screening of synthetic promoters which Venables described as a “unique capability for the industrialised development of synthetic promoters which doesn’t exist elsewhere.”
Promotors
Financial details of the deal have not been divulged but it is not exclusive and Synpromics is still able to develop promoters for use in other companies CHO cell lines.
And according to Venables, demand is high as companies look to reduce the bottleneck in the development of tools and products in the Biotech industry by moving away from the constraints of traditional viral or gene specific endogenous promoters.
“Natural promoters have evolved over millennia to regulate gene expression to the precise levels required to elicit a specific physiological function, in a particular cellular environment. Consequently, natural promoters are not best suited to control the expression of genes in the industrial setting of a bioreactor, nor in the environs of a diseased cell, where a particular degree of specificity and optimal therapeutic expression is required.”
