Date: 7 October 2022
Venue: Heidelberg, Germany
Attendees: Friedrich Reinhard (VP Academic Partnerships) and Laurie Sarrat (Business Development Manager)
Evotec will be attending at this year’s BioRN Annual conference as well as showcasing its research on site in Heidelberg.
If you wish to meet with us in Heidelberg, get in touch via the form below, we will be happy to arrange a meeting.
Learn more about the BioRN Annual Conference
Date: 16 - 17 November 2022
Location: Madrid, Spain
Attendees: Domenico Augelli (Clinical Manager, Clinical Development)
Tags: Events
Date: 4 - 7 October, 2022
Venue: Crowne Plaza Dublin - Blanchardstown
Attendees: Francesca Bernardini (VP In Vitro Biology) and Stephanie Sandiford (Senior Scientist II, Anti-Infectives)
Stephanie Sandiford will be presenting a poster: Abstract Number EA56, Wednesday, 5 October 2022 17.00-18.30, Thursday, 6 October 2022 17.15-18.15
Rapid endpoint method for the quantification of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) subjected to three different treatment regimens within the hollow fibre system (HFS)
If you wish to meet with us in Münster, get in touch via the form below, we will be happy to arrange a meeting.
Learn more about the 10th GSCN Conference & 20 years of Stem Cell Network NRW.
Date: 12-14 October, 2022
Venue: PACIFICO Yokohama, Japan
Attendees: Nick Johnson, Megumi Ruben and Adam Stoten
Evotec will be at BioJapan, Asia's largest partnering event, in Yokohama. Join our experts to learn more about Evotec's capabilities and solutions for drug discovery and development.
If you wish to meet with us at BioJapan, get in touch via the Partnering system or the form below, we will be happy to arrange a meeting.
Date: 13 September, 2022
Venue: LifeHub Lyon, France
Attendees: Lilia Boucinha, Team Leader, Global Bioinformatics
Lilia will be a panelist on the session entitled "Sustainability and digitalization of R&D in the era of open data and open innovation"
If you wish to meet with us in Lyon, get in touch via the form below, we will be happy to arrange a meeting.
Learn more about the Constellab Connect 2022
The importance of viral filtration studies
Biological therapeutics need to meet strict safety criteria. Virus safety is ensured through complementary manufacturing and quality control measures. Virus filtration is a critical element in this process, and viral filtration studies have become a key step in bioprocessing over the past decades. They are required by most regulators to bring a biologic to the market. The purpose is to assure that the final medicinal product is safe from the potential risk of viral contamination.
The quality of the design of such studies is key: when inappropriately designed, they may lead to undesired results such as non-representative filter fouling or virus breakthrough.
The characteristics of end-to-end continuous filtration
Continuous processing is a modern manufacturing method for biologicals, e.g. monoclonal antibodies (mAb). Consequently, also continuous viral clearance has to be investigated. Compared to batch filtration, continuous end-to-end processes present new challenges to the operation and validation of the viral filter:
Consequences for assessing viral clearance in continuous end-to-end filtration
This, in turn, means that assessment of viral clearance in continuous viral filtration may require studies spanning over several days and also novel virus-spiking strategies. This type of assessment is needed to adequately demonstrate a high level of viral clearance while ensuring the filters are not overloaded with virus and are consistent with real-life manufacturing conditions.
A team of scientists at Just- Evotec Biologics has performed studies to identify a robust virus filter that retains virus despite high load challenges and low operation pressures. Key findings were:
Summary and outlook
While bioprocessing technologies have evolved rapidly during the past decades, multiple factors such as increased cost, quality and production pressures are calling for further advances. At the same time, regulatory requirements are evolving and sophisticated safety testing has become a key prerequisite for market approval of novel biologics.
The team at JUST - Evotec Biologics has therefore kicked off an initiative to spearhead the development of next-generation bioprocessing technologies such as continuous end-to-end viral filtration.
Future work of the group will include optimization of the surrogate virus spiking and testing techniques as well as testing other virus filters for robustness of virus clearance at low flux/pressure conditions.
Interested in further information about Just-Evotec Biologics? Please visit our site.
For more information download the full poster.
Date: 2-5 October, 2022
Location: Phoenix, Arizona, USA
Attendees: Yalda Sedaghat (Project Lead, ASO Platform)
Evotec will be attending and showcasing its research on site in Phoenix at the 18th Annula Meeting of the Oligonucleotide Therapeuitcs Society .
The oligonucleotide therapeutics platform at Evotec: fully integrated RNA drug discovery
Yalda Sedaghat, Project Lead, ASO Platform at Evotec, will be presenting.
If you wish to meet with us in Phoenix, get in touch via the form below, we will be happy to arrange a meeting.
Learn more about the Annual Meeting of the Oligonucleotide Therapeutics Society
Date: 4 - 6 September 2022
Location: Barcelona, Spain
Attendees: Pierre-Philippe Saintot
Evotec will be at ERS in Barcelona with a collaborative poster presentation with Amgen on: "Identification and characterisation of selective antagonists for TMEM16A(acd) isoform for the treatment of obstructive respiratory diseases." The poster will be presented by our Principal Scientist, Electrophysiology, Pierre-Philippe Saintot on Tuesday 6th September at 12:00.
If you wish to meet with Pierre-Philippe at ERS, get in touch via the form below, we will be happy to arrange a meeting.
Chinese Ovary Hamster (CHO) cells are the most common mammalian cell lines used for the mass manufacturing of therapeutic proteins as they can produce recombinant proteins on the scale of 3-10 grams per liter of culture. However, the expression of these recombinant proteins rely on random genomic integration events, which typically result in a widely heterogeneous cell population. Therefore, cell line development is taking up much time for the extensive pooling and clone screening to identify clones with high expression, growth, and product quality.
Also, the random integration precludes experiments such as variant library screening as this screening method needs stably overexpressing pools or libraries of molecules in a single cell culture. With random integration, the assessment of yield, degree of library enrichment, etc. is very complicated as it is difficult to determine whether resulting library members differ due to inherent characteristics of each variant or merely to due to variable genomic integration site(s).
To address this problem and to provide a time- and cost-efficient solution, Just-Evotec Biologics’ scientists have developed two targeted integration systems by generating two clonal CHO cell lines stably expressing enhanced green fluorescent protein (eGFP) reporter landing pads in genomic hot spots. The goal of this study was to compare two options to evaluate the one that might be most suitable for in-house usage.
For the study, the team combined several approaches to circumvent random chromosomal insertions, resulting in the precision and reproducibility associated with site-specific recombinases as well as the biased selection of genomic hotspots associated with a certain transposon.
Recombination was carried out either by Cre or PhiC31 recombinase. Subsequently, genes for the expression of three therapeutic protein molecules were used to test targeted integration. The cell lines were then assayed for yield and productivity as well as characterized for landing pad copy number and integration fidelity by targeted locus amplification (TLA) and PCR. Both cell lines expressed high levels of the respective recombinant protein. The scientists additionally tested for enrichment of cell subpopulations with fully saturated landing pads with ganciclovir (GCV) counterselection.
The results of these experiments were quite compelling: Genetic characterization of the altered cell lines showed correct targeting of landing pads. Post‐integration enrichment for fully saturated landing pads using GCV counterselection increased recombinant protein titer by 2–2.5‐fold and specific productivity by ∼3.4‐fold.
Finally, the team developed a small antibody library of ~100 variants through random pairing of 10 unique light chains and 10 unique heavy chains by transfecting this library into a cell line containing a single copy landing pad wherein each cell line would express a single variant. Puromycin selection was used to identify cells that had successfully taken up one of the variants and cell-sorting for variants that successfully paired and expressed. Finally, the identity of successful chain pairs was determined with next generation sequencing.
As a result, Just-Evotec Biologics has demonstrated proof-of-principle of targeted integration systems in the CHO host cell line, with consistent genome integration into expected landing pad sites and high productivity. Moreover, test cases using three antibody or antibody-fusion therapeutic molecules showed similar levels of productivity. Finally, the team demonstrated that library screening or CHO display is feasible with the 100-member variant library. The study also reveals preliminary data from ongoing work to build upon these targeted integration systems, which includes isolating a single-copy landing pad cell line and the development of a CHO display platform.
Although additional work and optimization is still needed, the great advantage of this approach lies in the predictability with regards to the chromosomal integration of transgenes of interest. Among others, a key advantage of this approach is its ability to combine eGFP as a reporter gene and transposon-mediated integration to establish high-expression landing pad cell lines. With a significant decrease in heterogeneity between clones, it is possible to be able to reduce extensive pool screening, large scale cloning, and clone screening efforts.
All in all, defining and targeting predefined locations that promote high expression of an exogenous protein allows to develop cell lines expressing different recombinant protein therapeutics with a high degree of specificity and reproducibility - which, in turn, and will save a lot of time and costs.
For more information, please read the study or have a look at our poster.
Date: 7-10 November 2022
Location: PACIFICO Yokohama
Attendees: Tim Potter & Masaaki Yatsu
Learn more about 37th JSSX Annual Meeting