Evaluating the interaction between UCOE and DHFR-linked amplification and stability of recombinant protein expression

Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells are widely used in the biopharmaceutical industry. In the creation of mammalian cell lines plasmid DNA carrying the gene-of-interest integrates randomly into the host cell genome, which results in variable levels of gene expression between cell lines due to gene silencing mechanisms. In addition, cell lines often show unstable protein production during long-term culture. This means that a large number of clones need to be screened in order to isolate stable, high producing cell lines making mammalian cell line development a long and laborious process. In this study an expression platform incorporating a Ubiquitous Chromatin Opening Element (UCOE; which are proposed to maintain chromatin in an open state) has been utilised for the expression of eGFP in CHO cells. Cell lines containing a UCOE vector, showed a significantly higher and more consistent eGFP expression than the non-UCOE cell lines without DHFR amplification. To further improve recombinant protein production cell lines were amplified with methotrexate (MTX). UCOE cell lines showed improved growth in MTX therefore amplification to 250 nM MTX was achieved following a one-step amplification procedure. However, non-UCOE cell lines showed higher levels of eGFP production following MTX amplification. In addition, UCOE cell lines did not improve stability during long-term culture in the absence of selective pressure. Stable eGFP production was achieved for all cell lines when MTX is present. Finally, UCOE cell lines displayed more consistent response to external stimuli than non-UCOE cell lines, suggesting that UCOE cell lines are less prone to clonal variability.