Saccharomyces cerevisiae, biopharmaceuticals

Attention has also focused upon a variety of additional production systems for recombinant biopharmaceuticals. Yeast cells (particularly Saccharomyces cerevisiae) display a number of characteristics that make them attractive in this regard. These characteristics include ... 

In the next contribution we learn about hands-on experience and recent improvements with different production systems for biopharmaceuticals at Bayer Health-Care. As previously also published in Nature by Heiner Apeler, Head of Expression, an E. coli host/vector system was originally developed for the efficient production of an interleukin-4 variant, but afterwards it was optimized for the expression of other proteins and even Fab fragments. Process development and optimization of the yeast secretory Saccharomyces cerevisiae for expression of a protease inhibitor will also be presented. The focus, however, is on the use of a recently developed mammalian HKBll (hybrid clone of human kidney and B cells) expression system for recombinant human glycoprotein biopharmaceuticals. HKBll is a favorable cell host for the production of human proteins, because it dehvers biopharmaceuticals that are structurally identical to the natural product. The host/vector system supports the production of gram quantities of proteins in a large-scale transient transfection format as well as the development of stable cell fines. These systems together... 

Yeast is the third expression system used to produce biopharmaceuticals. As mammalian systems, they possess the ability to cany out post-translational modifications of proteins, although the glycosylation pattern usually varies somewhat from the patterns observed on the native protein or on the protein expressed in mammalian cells. Two recombinant proteins expressed in Saccharomyces cerevisiae are now approved for general medical use hepatitis B surface antigen vaccine and the anticoagulant Hirudin . Alternative promising production systems, in particular transgenic animal and plant systems, are still in development but these systems have to prove that they are technically and economically attractive. 

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