Cevec’s CAP technology will be coupled with Catalent’s GPEx technology.
Cevec Pharmaceuticals and Catalent Pharma Solutions have launched a joint commercial cell-line development service for pharma and biotech customers developing recombinant proteins and antibodies worldwide.
The service combines Cevec’s human cell line CAP-T expression technology with Catalent’s GPEx® (gene product expression) technology. The goal is to generate high-expressing stable human cell lines in a much shorter time frame than traditional methods.
CAP cell lines contain adenovirus type 5 nucleotide sequence 505-4079 including the E1 genes and the entire pIX sequence. The technology uses an expression system for biopharmaceuticals based on human amniocytes derived from amniotic fluid cells obtained by amniocentesis.
GPEx technology is a pseudo-types, high-titer vector designed to generate stable mammalian cell lines. GPEx has reportedly been used to express more than 380 different molecules.
The joint cell-line service will allow the development of a clone candidate in less than five months, significantly reducing customers’ time to clinic, states Scott Houlton, Catalent’s president of development & clinical services. By contrast, using conventional gene insertion and expression techniques, development of a stable production cell line for atraget protein can take up to 18 months, he notes.
Wolfgang Kintzel, managing director and CCO of CEVEC, says that after several months of testing the combination of CAP cells and GPEx technology, “we achieved yields exceeding 3 g/L for a very complex protein produced in our human production cell lines in a very short time frame.”
