Research programme 1

Programme area 1

The success of protein drugs over small molecular drugs relates to higher specificity, activity and longer in vivo half-life, which has made them increasingly dominant on the list of blockbuster drugs. These are most often produced in mammalian cell lines, such as the workhorse Chinese Hamster Ovary cell line (CHO), successfully serving to produce IgG and other challenging biologics for many decades. Several upcoming next-generation biologics as well as some of the human natively secreted proteins, however display difficulties in production in active processed form at the high yields needed in CHO. This program area headed by PI Johan Rockberg addresses these issues in two subprojects run by KTH in close collaboration with the partner companies.

Project A

Put together a toolbox for transcriptome analysis of industrial producer mammalian cell lines (CHO) for identification of limiting factors and predictive indicators of cell line behavior. Perform in-depth analysis of a set of cell lines displaying limitations in secretion, processing or metabolism.
PI: Associate Professor Adil Mardinoglu
Post doc: Gholamreza Bidkhori

Project B

Put together a toolbox for tuning of protein secretion in CHO. Including overexpression of limiting factors and down-regulation of counteracting regulators.
PI: Professor Johan Rockberg
PhD student: Niklas Thalén

Partner companies: