Zurich, January 2016
ChoMaster®EPO – Investigate the structure of the glycan chains of recombinant human Epo expressed by CHO cells in an open-source minimal medium.
Cell Culture Technologies launched a crowdlicensing campaign in which donors will be able to acquire the rights to ChoMaster®EPO, a serum-free adapted CHO cell line expressing recombinant human EPO (rh-EPO) in protein- and peptide-free FMX-8 medium. The unique potential of this recombinant CHO cell line resides in the possibility to express rh-EPO in a culture environment of known qualitative and quantitative composition. The formulation of the FMX-8 culture medium used to express rh-EPO was published in Nature Biotechnology (1995) to produce recombinant proteins under chemically defined culture conditions (doi:10.1038/nbt0495-389).
ChoMaster®EPO cells are available from Cell Culture Technologies only, but CEO and founder Ferruccio Messi is interested in the world-wide distribution of the EPO-expressing cells: “With the ChoMaster®EPO campaign, we respond to a significant demand for open source technologies to express complex glycoproteins in a well-characterised culture medium whose composition is in the public domain. Cell biologists involved in areas of research such as cell genetics, cell physiology and glycobiology seem to be highly motivated to gain access to material and methods previously unavailable and/or under lock”.
Difficulties in expressing complex glycoproteins often arise from a lack of understanding of the roles played by the individual medium components, especially when unknown ingredients are present in the culture medium. The use of a well-known micro-environment which satisfies the metabolic requirements of the cells allows a better understanding of the mechanisms of recombinant glycoprotein expression.
For more details please refer to ChoMaster®EPO.
ChoMaster® is a registered trademark of Dr. F. Messi Cell Culture Technologies.