Improvement of pCOR plasmid copy number for pharmaceutical applications

Production of pharmaceutical-grade plasmid DNA is becoming important as the demand for clinical batches is steadily growing. pCOR plasmids have been specifically designed and used for gene delivery into humans, and have been produced by high cell-density fermentation with a yield of 100 mg/l. This yield could probably be increased as long as the release specifications of bulk plasmid remain the same, particularly in terms of plasmid sequence. We report here the use of genetic approaches in Escherichia coli to increase the copy number of pCOR. The bacterial gene encoding the pi initiator-protein, which plays a pivotal role in pCOR replication, was mutagenized. A fluorescence-based screening methodology in E. coli was used to identify novel copy-up mutations. A particular combination of copy-up mutations translated into a 3-5-fold increase in monomer pCOR plasmid DNA per biomass unit.