In recent years researchers have turned to transient gene expression (TGE) as an alternative to CHO stable cell line production for early stage antibody development. Despite advances in transfection methods and culture optimization, the majority of CHO-based TGE systems produce insufficient antibody titers (low mg/L level) for full use within the biotherapeutic development pipelines.

MaxCyte’s delivery platform for cell engineering is based on Flow Electroporation™ technology and provides a universal means of fully scalable, highly efficient CHO-based TGE for the rapid production of gram level quantities of antibodies without the need for specialized reagents, expression vectors, or engineered CHO cell lines. The high productivity of MaxCyte-driven TGE allows for its use in early phase candidate identification as well as for generating the gram level antibody quantities needed for later stage pharmacology, stability, and manufacturability studies.

In this technical note, we present data demonstrating the reproducibility, scalability, and antibody production capabilities of MaxCyte electroporation. Secreted antibody titers routinely exceed 400 mg/L and can exceed 2.7 g/L following optimization, thereby enabling multi-gram antibody production from a single, CHO cell transfection. In addition, we present data showing the use of MaxCyte electroporation for the rapid generation of high-yield stable CHO cell lines to bridge the gap between early and late stage antibody development activities.