Project

Empowering biomanufacturing with advanced Pichia-based VHH-Fc production and engineering

Code
1SHEZ24N
Duration
01 November 2023 → 31 October 2027
Funding
Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO)
Research disciplines
  • Medical and health sciences
    • Carbohydrates
    • Synthetic biology
    • Proteins
Keywords
Post-translational modifications Biotechnology Yeast expression system
 
Project description

The current COVID-19 pandemic highlights the critical need for the rapid development of effective therapies against emerging infectious diseases. Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) are a promising therapeutic approach to such diseases and CHO cells are the workhorse of mAb production. Since the CHO manufacturing is not rapid enough for the pandemic response, yeast host Pichia pastoris is a good alternative through the easier manufacturing of VHH-Fc products that results in effector functionalities, and a long half-life. The Pichia pastoris expression system offers several including high expression levels, ability to process post-translational modifications. Here, we describe our work on the production of aglycosylated and glycosylated VHH-Fcs using the Pichia pastoris expression system. We will engineer the Pichia secretory pathway by directed evolution techniques which require to development of a method (PiZZAH in chemostat) that allows us to screen many clones. Also, we will engineer the N-glycosylation pathway to make it CHO-type N-glycosylation and GlycoDelete strategies. In the end, we will develop a repeated fed-batch production system in that we can produce a variety of VHH-Fcs in optimum conditions.