Monoclonal antibodies production in microbial systems: Current status, challenges and perspectives

Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) serve as indispensable tools in diagnostics, clinical therapeutics, and biomedical research. However, their large-scale production faces significant challenges due to the high costs and lengthy timelines associated with conventional mammalian cell-based expression systems. Microbial expression platforms have emerged as a transformative alternative, offering cost-effectiveness, rapid cultivation cycles, and superior genetic tractability for industrial-scale monoclonal antibodies production. Recent advances in Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR)/Cas9-mediated gene editing enable precise metabolic engineering of host strains to enhance protein folding, secretion efficiency, and translational accuracy. Synthetic biology approaches facilities the reconstruction of mammalian glycosylation pathways in microbial systems, yielding monoclonal antibodies with near-native structural integrity. Furthermore, AI (artificial intelligence)-driven optimization of expression vectors, promoter systems, and culture conditions, combined with high-throughput screening of engineered strains, significantly accelerates the identification of high-yield production clones. This review comprehensively examines current progress in microbial expression systems, strain engineering strategies, and fermentation optimization for enhanced monoclonal antibodies production, while critically discussing existing limitations and potential solutions to advance the field.