Efficient mAb production in CHO cells with optimized signal peptide, codon, and UTR

Antibody drugs have been used to treat a number of diseases successfully. Producing antibodies with high yield and quality is necessary for clinical applications of antibodies. For a candidate molecule, optimization of a vector to produce sufficient yield and an accurate primary structure is indispensable in the early stage of the production process development. It is especially important to maintain the fidelity of N-terminal sequence. In order to produce antibodies with a high yield and accurate N-terminal, the expression vector was systematically optimized in this study. First, the heavy chain and light chain were co-expressed in Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells with different signal peptides. Mass spectrometry (MS) revealed that signal peptides Esp-K, Bsp-H, and 8Hsp-H were accurately deleted from mature antibodies. Further, the yield was doubled by codon optimization and increased by 50% with the presence of untranslated regions (UTR). The combination of UTR with optimal codon and signal peptide to form an expression vector resulted in yield improvement of 150% and correct N-terminal sequences. Moreover, the main product peak was above 98% as assessed by size-exclusion chromatography (SEC). Additionally, the bioactivity of products made from optimized transient gene expression (TGE) was almost identical to the standard sample. The production efficiency and product quality from the identified TGE optimization strategy was further demonstrated through application to two other antibodies. The expression level of SGE (stable gene expression) can also be improved effectively with this optimization strategy. In conclusion, vector optimization via combination of optimized signal peptide, codon, and UTR is an alternative approach for efficient antibody production with high fidelity N-terminal sequence in CHO cells.