Oxford: Technology for improving protein yields in bioprocessing

Licensing opportunity | Development opportunity

Isis Innovation, the technology transfer arm of Oxford University, has released details of a new method for increasing protein production, which it says has the potential to significantly increase yields of therapeutic proteins. The method, developed at Oxford’s Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, has been tested in standard mammalian cell systems. Early data shows that yields of the hormone erythropoietin, a widely prescribed drug with significant commercial value, increased ten fold.

“We discovered that the part of the protein-expression process know as termination, which is generally considered unimportant in increasing protein yields, is in fact a driving force for optimal gene expression”, said Nicholas Proudfoot, who led the research.

He added, “We identified a new location in the DNA sequence which turns out to play an extremely important role in the termination process. To date this method has been successful in providing this further ten-fold increase in protein production in a range of cell systems.”

The sequence is also in an area of the genome known as post poly-A, which means the integrity of the protein expression sequence itself is well protected, as no insertion of new sequences close to the actual protein sequence is needed.

The technology is broadly applicable to protein production, either in the laboratory or at an industrial scale. It is being developed for eukaryotic systems but may be more widely applicable. Monoclonal antibodies and therapeutic proteins appear to be good initial applications.