Ann Nguyen: | Hello. This is Ann Nguyen, Senior Associate Conference Producer with Cambridge Healthtech Institute. We're here for a podcast for the Optimising Expression Platforms conference at PEGS Europe, which takes place the 31st of October to the 4th of November in Lisbon, Portugal. Today we have one of our featured speakers, Bjørn Voldborg, Director of CHO Cell Line Development at Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability with the Technical University of Denmark. Bjørn, welcome to Boston this week and thank you for chatting today. |
Bjørn Voldborg: | Thank you for giving me the opportunity. |
Ann Nguyen: | You've been working in recombinant protein expression for over two decades. Can you describe how the field has evolved in terms of the challenges that have been overcome or persisted and new ones that have arisen? |
Bjørn Voldborg: | One of the most obvious things that have evolved over the past two decades is the knowledge we now have of the genomes of the cells that produce the proteins, which gives us the opportunities to actually manipulate the cells, instead of random selection, which was the way of doing these things 15, 20 years ago. That has overcome a lot of the challenges we had of getting the right cell lines to production without having to screen multimillions of cell … to find it. |
Ann Nguyen: | Your team at the Center for Biosustainability aims to engineer CHO cell lines, optimised for the production of therapeutic proteins. What technological, process or other improvements seem most promising for increasing product yield, product quality and other desirable traits? |
Bjørn Voldborg: | The big technological improvement that's been going on over the last two or three years is obviously the CRISPR technology coming, and as we are a group that is working on engineering the genome of the cell lines, this has of course generated enormous valuable tool in our hands. We use this now so that we actually, hopefully will end up having cell lines that have very robust behavior and that we will not have to screen for multiple clones, and actually hopefully not even have to optimise bioprocesses anymore. Those things, that technological breakthrough that the CRISPR was three years ago is amazing. Basically changed the world in our field. |
Ann Nguyen: | You're involved with multiple parts of the PEGS Europe program, including a training seminar on Basic Technologies in a Core Protein Expression Lab as a panelist and a breakout discussion group on Engineering Cell Factories for Protein Production as a moderator. This is all beyond your podium presentation on “Engineering the CHO Cell” the 2nd of November. Why the interest in these areas? What ties them all to your recombinant protein expression research and the need to meet the demand for recombinant antibodies? |
Bjørn Voldborg: | I've been working with production of recombinant proteins for a long time, as we mentioned before, and for many many years it was mainly as a service function. We basically produced a protein for somebody who needed them downstream. The Center for Biosustainability now has given me the opportunity to actually address this as a science and not as a service function. This, of course, is an incredible opportunity for me and also for the field, and it's basically what I've been wanting to do for a very long time and have tried to do it on the side while I was still producing proteins, but we never really got around to do it thoroughly. Therefore, my interest in all this area of engineering cell factories for protein production has been something that has been very close to my heart for a long time, and all these areas that you mentioned are basically summing up right into the possibility of making a better cell factory for the production of recombinant protein and recombinant antibodies. |
Ann Nguyen: | Thank you, Bjørn. You clearly have a lot of experience and insights to share, so we're really looking forward to hearing even more from you this fall. |
Bjørn Voldborg: | Thank you and you're welcome. |
Ann Nguyen: | That was Bjørn Voldborg of Technical University of Denmark. He'll be a featured speaker during the Optimising Expressions Platforms conference at PEGS Europe, which runs the 31st of October to the 4th of November in Lisbon, Portugal. To learn more from him, visit www.PEGSummitEurope.com/Optimising-Protein-Expression for registration details and enter the keycode “Podcast”. This is Ann Nguyen. Thank you for listening. |