Mammalian Cell Culture as a Platform for Veterinary Vaccines

For more than three decades, mammalian cells have been the host par excellence for the recombinant protein production for therapeutic purposes in humans. Due to the high cost of media and other supplies used for cell growth, initially this expression platform was only used for the production of proteins of pharmaceutical importance including antibodies. However, large biotechnological companies that used this platform continued research to improve its technical and economic feasibility. The main qualitative improvement was obtained when individual cells could be cultured in a liquid medium similar to bacteria and yeast cultures. Another important innovation for growing cells in suspension was the improvement in chemically defined media that does not contain macromolecules; they were cheaper to culture as any other microbial media. These scientific milestones have reduced the cost of mammalian cell culture and their use in obtaining proteins for veterinary use. The ease of working with mammalian cell culture has permitted the use of this expression platform to produce active pharmaceutic ingredients for veterinary vaccines. In this chapter, the protocol to obtain recombinant mammalian cell lines will be described.