The Best Way to Optimize Your Chinese Hamster Ovary Cell Lines

Are you having performance problems with your chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells grown in chemically-defined media?

You are not alone.

Finally, the solution to your problems!

Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) cells are commonly used in biomanufacturing and biomedical research, and particularly in the production of monoclonal antibodies.

Problems Encountered With CHO Cell Cultures

Generally, CHO cells are strong-able to withstand adverse conditions. They have been successfully grown in a range of media that traditionally include components derived from human or animal blood. Most scientists, however, try to avoid using this type of cell culture media in order to lower the risk of introducing infectious agents that may contaminate the final product.

Chemically-defined and animal-free media have been developed to remove these components, but they do not perform as well as traditional media in terms of growth, doubling time or antibody productivity.

Some of the most challenging aspects of CHO cell culture systems dependent on chemically defined or animal-free media include:

• Low productivity, leading to slower cell growth and higher manufacturing costs
  




 

• Poor adaptation of CHO cells to the media, requiring the addition of enhancers (like hydrolysates), which reduce the media's effectiveness and introduces variability
• Greatly increased cell doubling times, leading to slower cell line development and an extended time from freezer to bioreactor
  
  



• Premature cell lysis, generating enzymes and proteases that can destroy or denature antibodies produced
  
  
  
  
  
• Binding of CHO host proteins (CHOP) to chromatography columns, which contaminate the produced antibodies
• The medium used may have to be optimized for each clone, since all CHO clones do not behave uniformly, making it difficult to establish a standard medium
• Shear protectants may also have to be added to the media, as bioreactors can cause mechanical stress and damage cells

Many of these problems can be easily solved by optimizing your cell culture media with products designed by InVitria.

The Solution to These Problems

InVitria has focused its research on maximizing cell performance in CHO cultures and at the same time reducing the regulatory and product safety risks. This was achieved by eliminating animal-derived cell culture additives such as fetal bovine serum (FBS), bovine serum albumin (BSA), human serum albumin and hydrolysates.

As a result of this research, we have developed chemically-defined, performance enhancing supplements that guarantee optimal performance in CHO biomanufacturing.

These products include recombinant human serum albumin (rHSA, or Cellastim^TM), recombinant human lactoferrin (rLF or Lacromin^TM) and Zap-CHO, an affordable

animal-free alternative to FBS.

Want to Learn More About These Impressive Cell Culture Additives?

About Cellastim^TM, Lacromin^TM and Zap-CHO:

• Cellastim^TM outperforms plasma-derived albumin, bovine serum albumin and other sources of recombinant albumin
• Lacromin^TM is a CHO growth factor that outperforms insulin and IGF-1
• ZAP-CHO is a unique combination of supplements that is unrivaled for enhancing cell performance
• All InVitria products are chemically-defined and completely animal-free

In addition, extensive independent research studies of these additives in CHO media have shown that Cellastim^TM, Lacromin^TM and ZAP-CHO significantly:

• Optimize growth (IVC)
• Reduce apoptosis
• Improve doubling times
• Maximize antibody productivity
• IgG free

Lacromin^TM alone increases antibody production by 50% in comparison to Transferrin, and by 6% when compared to FBS.

Cellastim^TM not only speeds up cell doubling times and enhances cell growth, but does so consistently, performing better than alternative sources of albumin to increase antibody production.

ZAP-CHO produces cell doublings comparable to those produced when FBS is used and it provides optimal productivity. View the Zap-CHO product video.