Protein Expression. Avoid a costly failed scale-up

Waving goodbye to antibody engineering and moving your lead candidates into transient protein expression is a big milestone in therapeutic antibody development. Usually you are in a rush. Time is money after-all.

But beware!

Breakneck development can trip up drug developers, who are left with costly setbacks to fix before re-joining the race.

Now is your final chance to check your antibody. Get a sneak peek into the behaviour of your antibody. Is it worth risking an underperforming protocol or a misbehaving antibody?

Take a closer look at your antibody

We recommend running a pilot scheme before full scale up. This can help you:

Validate procedures
Avoid liabilities like fragmentation or glycosylation
Identify issues related to immunogenicity and stability

You want to ensure you are scaling an antibody which you can actually manufacture!

Think you know your molecule?

Having the ability to distinguish an ideal drug candidate from a dead-end molecule at this stage is an absolute must for a successful drug developer.

In this example, the presence of multimers and aggregates, only identified by a more thorough analysis, skew the affinity results and mask a low quality preparation of antibody.

Deep analysis of function, purity and protein quality is therefore vital.

Top 5 tips before you begin your transient protein expression

Engineer your best chance of success
Have you scrutinized your sequences for all liabilities and optimized for manufacturability?
Optimize the transient protein expression protocol
Make sure that your antibody is a close representative of an early-stage stable clone to take forward for manufacturing
Quality control as you mean to continue
Quality and quantity are not mutually exclusive, but if forced to choose, we recommend going for quality every time. 
Pilot your stability strategy
Have you thought about how your antibody will withstand the shelf or storage?
Don’t overwork your cells
We favour quality over quantity. This is partly because when high-yielding mammalian expression systems are pushed to the extreme, the quality of the antibody protein produced suffers.

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At Fusion Antibodies, we have been helping biotechs and pharma companies develop their antibodies since 2001. Through partnership with our clients, we take a holistic view of their antibody development focusing on the end result – developing an antibody which is manufacturable and more likely to make it to the clinic.

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