Impact of Using Different Promoters and Matrix Attachment Regions on Recombinant Protein Expression Level and Stability in Stably Transfected CHO Cells

High expression level and long-term expression stability are required for therapeutic protein production in mammalian cells. Three commonly used promoters from the simian virus 40 (SV40), the CHO elongation factor 1α gene (EF1α), and the human cytomegalovirus major immediate early gene (CMV) and two matrix attachment regions from the chicken lysozyme gene (cMAR) and the human interferon β (iMAR) were evaluated for enhancing recombinant gene expression level and stability in stably transfected CHO cells. In the absence of MAR elements, the SV40 promoter gave lower expression level but higher stability than the EF1α promoter and the CMV promoter. The inclusion of MAR elements did not increase the integrated gene copies for all promoters but did enhance expression level for only the SV40 promoter. The enhanced gene expression was due to an increase in mRNA levels. Neither MAR elements enhance gene expression stability during long-term culture. The combinations of SV40 promoter and MAR elements are the best for obtaining both high expression level and stability. The information presented here would be valuable to those developing vectors for generation of CHO cell lines with stable and high productivity.ASTAR (Agency for Sci., Tech. and Research, S’pore)Accepted versio

Insertion of core CpG island element into human CMV promoter for enhancing recombinant protein expression stability in CHO cells

The human cytomegalovirus promoter (hCMV) is susceptible to gene silencing in CHO cells, most likely due to epigenetic events, such as DNA methylation and histone modifications. The core CpG island element (IE) from the hamster adenine phosphoribosyltransferase gene has been shown to prevent DNA methylation. A set of modified hCMV promoters was developed by inserting one or two copies of IE in either forward or reverse orientations either upstream of the hCMV enhancer, between the enhancer and core promoter (CP), or downstream of the CP. The modified hCMV with one copy of IE inserted between the enhancer and core promoter in reverse orientation (MR1) was most effective at enhancing expression stability without compromising expression level when compared with the wild-type (WT) hCMV. A third of 18 EGFP expressing clones generated using MR1 retained 70% of their starting expression level after 8 weeks of culture in the absence of selection pressure, while none of 18 WT hCMV generated clones had expression above 50%. MR1 also improved antibody expression stability of methotrexate (MTX) amplified CHO cell lines. Stably transfected pools generated using MR1 maintained 62% of their original monoclonal antibody titer after 8 weeks of culture in the absence of MTX, compared to only 37% for WT hCMV pools. Low levels of CpG methylation within both WT hCMV and MR1 were observed in all the analyzed cell lines and the methylation levels did not correlate to the expression stability, suggesting IE enhances expression stability by other mechanisms other than preventing methylation.ASTAR (Agency for Sci., Tech. and Research, S’pore)Accepted versio