Transcriptional profiling of apoptotic pathways in batch and fed-batch CHO cell cultures

Chinese Hamster ovary (CHO) cells are regarded as one of the "work-horses" for complex biotherapeutics production. In these processes, loss in culture viability occurs primarily via apoptosis, a genetically controlled form of cellular suicide. Using our "in-house" developed CHO cDNA array and a mouse oligonucleotide array for time profile expression analysis of batch and fed-batch CHO cell cultures, the genetic circuitry that regulates and executes apoptosis induction were examined. During periods of high viability, most pro-apoptotic genes were down-regulated but upon loss in viability, several early pro-apoptotic signaling genes were up-regulated. At later stages of viability loss, we detected late pro-apoptotic effector genes such as caspases and DNases being up-regulated. This sequential regulation of apoptotic genes showed that DNA microarrays could be used as a tool to study apoptosis. We found that in batch and fed-batch cultures, apoptosis signaling occurred primarily via death receptor- and mitochondria-mediated signaling pathways rather than endoplasmic reticulum-mediated signaling. These insights provide a greater understanding of the regulatory circuitry of apoptosis during cell culture and allow for subsequent targeting of relevant apoptosis signaling genes to prolong cell culture.