Development of a CHO-based Upstream Process for Rapid Production of Coronavirus Antigen Variants

Millipore Sigma aims to create a platform capable of expressing viral antigen proteins for vaccine production in CHO cells at small scale in 14–16 weeks. This will be achieved by developing versatile workflows, gene expression vectors that can be adapted for novel antigen proteins, and templated small scale bioreactor processes to improve viral antigen product yields. 

 The goals of this project are to: 

• Develop an expression vector toolbox to enable the selection of an expression vector to produce viral antigens at higher yields 
• Reduce the time required for cell line development, increasing project capacity per employee 
• Significantly reduce the amount of screening for cells that contain the correct viral protein during cell line development 
• Enhance and accelerate the transition from small scale to production scale for difficult to express proteins