Essentially Leading Antibody Production: An Investigation of Amino Acids, Myeloma, and Natural V-Region Signal Peptides in Producing Pertuzumab and Trastuzumab Variants.

Boosting the production of recombinant therapeutic antibodies is crucial in both academic and industry settings. In this work, we investigated the usage of varying signal peptides by antibody V-genes and their roles in recombinant transient production, systematically comparing myeloma and the native signal peptides of both heavy and light chains in 168 antibody permutation variants. We found that amino acids count and types (essential or non-essential) were important factors in a logistic regression equation model for predicting transient co-transfection protein production rates. Deeper analysis revealed that the culture media were often incomplete and that the supplementation of essential amino acids can improve the recombinant protein yield. While these findings are derived from transient HEK293 expression, they also provide insights to the usage of the large repertoire of antibody signal peptides, where by varying the number of specific amino acids in the signal peptides attached to the variable regions, bottlenecks in amino acid availability can be mitigated.

Alternative therapies for the management of inhibitors.

The development of inhibitors to factor VIII (FVIII) or factor IX (FIX) remains a major treatment complication encountered in the treatment of haemophilia. Not all patients with even the same severity and genotype develop inhibitors suggesting an underlying mechanism of tolerance against FVIII- or FIX-related immunity. One mechanism may be central tolerance observed in patients in whom the FVIII mutation enables some production of the protein. The other is a peripheral tolerance mechanism which may be evident in patients with null mutation. Recently, recombinant porcine FVIII (rpFVIII, Obixur, OBI-1, BAX801) has been developed for the haemostatic treatment of both congenital haemophilia with inhibitor (CHAWI) and acquired haemophilia A (AHA). In 28 subjects with AHA with life-/limb-threatening bleeding, rpFVIII reduced or stopped bleeding in all patients within 24 h. The cross-reactivity of anti-human FVIII antibodies to rpFVIII remains around 30-50%. Recently, new therapeutics based on the quite novel concepts have been developed and clinical studies are ongoing. These are humanized asymmetric antibody mimicking FVIIIa function by maintaining a suitable interaction between FIXa and FX (Emicizumab, ACE910), and small interfering RNAs (siRNA, ALN-AT3) suppress liver production of AT through post-transcriptional gene silencing and a humanized anti-TFPI monoclonal antibody (Concizumab). Their main advantages are longer half-life, subcutaneous applicability and efficacy irrespective of the presence of inhibitors which will make it easier to initiate more effective treatment especially early childhood.

Selective Allosteric Inhibition of MMP9 Is Efficacious in Preclinical Models of Ulcerative Colitis and Colorectal Cancer.

Expression of matrix metalloproteinase 9 (MMP9) is elevated in a variety of inflammatory and oncology indications, including ulcerative colitis and colorectal cancer. MMP9 is a downstream effector and an upstream mediator of pathways involved in growth and inflammation, and has long been viewed as a promising therapeutic target. However, previous efforts to target matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs), including MMP9, have utilized broad-spectrum or semi-selective inhibitors. While some of these drugs showed signs of efficacy in patients, all MMP-targeted inhibitors have been hampered by dose-limiting toxicity or insufficient clinical benefit, likely due to their lack of specificity. Here, we show that selective inhibition of MMP9 did not induce musculoskeletal syndrome (a characteristic toxicity of pan-MMP inhibitors) in a rat model, but did reduce disease severity in a dextran sodium sulfate-induced mouse model of ulcerative colitis. We also found that MMP9 inhibition decreased tumor growth and metastases incidence in a surgical orthotopic xenograft model of colorectal carcinoma, and that inhibition of either tumor- or stroma-derived MMP9 was sufficient to reduce primary tumor growth. Collectively, these data suggest that selective MMP9 inhibition is a promising therapeutic strategy for treatment of inflammatory and oncology indications in which MMP9 is upregulated and is associated with disease pathology, such as ulcerative colitis and colorectal cancer. In addition, we report the development of a potent and highly selective allosteric MMP9 inhibitor, the humanized monoclonal antibody GS-5745, which can be used to evaluate the therapeutic potential of MMP9 inhibition in patients.

Use of a Plackett-Burman statistical design to determine the effect of selected amino acids on monoclonal antibody production in CHO cells.

Culture media design is central to the optimization of monoclonal antibody (mAb) production. Although general strategies do not currently exist for optimization of culture media, the combined use of statistical design and analysis of experiments and strategies based on simple material balances can facilitate culture media design. In this study, we evaluate the effect of selected amino acids on the growth rate and monoclonal antibody production of a Chinese hamster ovary DG-44 (CHO-DG44) cell line. These amino acids were selected based on their relative mass fraction in the specific mAb produced in this study, their consumption rate during bioreactor experiments, and also through a literature review. A Plackett-Burman statistical design was conducted to minimize the number of experiments needed to obtain statistically relevant information. The effect of this set of amino acids was evaluated during exponential cell culture (considering viable cell concentration and the specific growth rate as main output variables) and during the high cell-density stage (considering mAb final concentration and specific productivity as relevant output variables). For this particular cell line, leucine (Leu) and arginine (Arg) had the highest negative and positive effects on cell viability, respectively; Leu and threonine (Thr) had the highest negative effect on growth rate, and valine (Val) and Arg demonstrated the highest positive impact on mAb final concentration. Results suggest the pertinence of a two-stage strategy for amino acid supplementation, with a mixture optimized for cell growth and a different amino acid mixture for mAb production at high density.