The rapidly growing interest for cell and gene therapies demands the development of robust, scalable, and cost-effective bioprocesses for viral vector production. For the production of lentiviral vector (LVV) at high titers, we have developed an inducible packaging system in suspension HEK293 cells from which we can also generate stable producer cell lines, in serum-free conditions. To evaluate the potential of this platform, we have generated a stable cell line that produces an LVV encoding a green fluorescent protein (GFP) and obtains 10E+07 to 10E+08 transduction units (TU)/mL at the 4 L, 10 L and 50 L scales. Functional LVV titers were maintained across all scales in bioreactors with different configurations and geometries indicating process robustness. Further, the addition of 10% feed increased the volumetric productivity by 3.5-fold in comparison to batch production, making our platform suitable for large-scale LVV production and showing a real potential for commercial manufacturing.
Tag: <span>GMP</span>
The rapidly growing interest for cell and gene therapies demands the development of robust, scalable, and cost-effective bioprocesses for viral vector production. For the production of lentiviral vector (LVV) at high titers, we have developed an inducible packaging system in suspension HEK293 cells from which we can also generate stable producer cell lines, in serum-free conditions. To evaluate the potential of this platform, we have generated a stable cell line that produces an LVV encoding a green fluorescent protein (GFP) and obtains 10E+07 to 10E+08 transduction units (TU)/mL at the 4 L, 10 L and 50 L scales. Functional LVV titers were maintained across all scales in bioreactors with different configurations and geometries indicating process robustness. Further, the addition of 10% feed increased the volumetric productivity by 3.5-fold in comparison to batch production, making our platform suitable for large-scale LVV production and showing a real potential for commercial manufacturing.
“Closed system.” The term itself appears deceptively simple. However, the definition of a closed system, its implementation, and its impact on biomanufacturing has been anything but straightforward.
The journey toward implementing closed systems spans over 20 years. The concept of closed systems was introduced in January 2000 with the draft issue of ICH Q7. Since then, other industry guidance documents emerged, defining and supporting process/system closure as a primary means of risk mitigation to meet the baseline requirement of protecting the product, as defined in cGMP.
Presently, global regulatory agencies recognize three distinct definitions of a closed system. These definitions, found in EU Annex 1, EU Annex 2, and the PIC Annex 2A, all focus on product protection where the product is not exposed to the immediate room environment during manufacturing. This is where the journey begins.
Biopharmaceutical manufacturing often takes place in tank farms – facilities in which large-volume vessels are used to support cell culture processes with equally sized, or even larger buffer preparation and storage tanks to support downstream processing. While the large cell culture vessels used to produce products are justifiable, current downstream buffer management approaches relying on high-capacity tanks lead to constraints on facility construction, operations, and plant flexibility….
Regulatory agencies routinely announce changes in the GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices) norms and quality standards designed to guarantee that every product retains characteristics required for its pharmaceutical use.The alignment with emerging regulatory requirements is mandatory, therefore, to assure production process consistency, as well as the safety and efficacy of the finished product…
In order to move product development forward, the majority of biotech companies and academic institutions involved in cell-based therapies need new facilities in order to scale up production capabilities and comply with evolving regulatory requirements. Some institutions choose to use a contract manufacturing organization (CMO) to benefit from established expertise while others support their clinical development programs with their own dedicated production facility. The main challenges in establishing a dedicated pilot-scale production facility are described hereafter…
Manufacturers of biological products have come to accept that it makes sense, from both a business as well as a regulatory perspective, to address GMP compliance issues with bioprocessing methods as early as possible in product development. Logically, this same reasoning would also apply to the associated analytical methods used to characterize the product; however, companies still frequently leave methods optimization and validation until later in the developmental timeline which can expose them to unexpected regulatory challenges. In addition, as therapeutics increase in complexity (e.g., cell therapies, transgenics), it raises the likelihood that product characterization will be assessed by novel and increasingly intricate assays—making it difficult to follow a “one size fits all” approach to method selection, development and validation…
One of the major concerns facing relatively young biotechnology companies once a lead product has been identified is the issue of manufacturing. Usually this involves the upscaling of a lab-scale process while at the same time, complying with good manufacturing practice (GMP) to ensure a reproducibly-produced and consistent product. It also involves the establishment of specific and robust assays in process controls and release criteria. This issue has become more acute in the EU since 2004 due to the EU Clinical Trials Directive requiring GMP-certified production of investigational medical products even for phase I trials. Startup biotech companies are often limited in their finances and resources, as well as being bound by tight milestones. Quite often the expertise in upscaling and GMP-compliant production as well as the facilities and equipment required are not available in-house…