Human cell lines for the production of recombinant proteins: on the horizon

The market of recombinant proteins as human pharmaceuticals has surpassed annual revenues of more than 150 billion dollars. The marketed proteins are often complex in terms of post-translational modifications and conventional hosts have shown weaknesses in terms of quality of these recombinant proteins. Especially the non-human glycopatterns leading to immunogenicity or shortened in vivo half-life have gained attention over the past decade. Therefore, production cell lines with better or novel characteristics are required and human cell lines seem to be the most genuine and logical choice. Thus, several human cell lines have been used to generate biopharmaceuticals. We here present an overview of such examples and highlight their promise for biopharmaceutical production processes of the future.