BI-HEX ® -GlymaxX ® cells enable efficient production of next generation biomolecules with enhanced ADCC activity

Background Despite the succes story of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), a medical need remains to improve their efficacy. One possibility to achieve this is to modulate important effector functions such as the antibody dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC). The advantage of highly active biotherapeutic molecules is apart from the enhanced efficacy the reduction of side effects due to lower administered doses. Furthermore, these therapeutic antibodies may enable treatment of current nonresponders, e.g. patients with low antigen bearing tumors. Enhancement of the effector functions of antibodies can be achieved either by directly mutating the antibody’s amino acid sequence or by modifying its glycosylation pattern, e.g. by using a novel host cell line able to attach a desired glycostructure to the product. The latter approach has the advantage of not impacting the antibody structure itself, thereby avoiding negative effects on the PK/PD of the molecule. During the last decade it has been shown that antibodies with a reduced level of glycan fucosylation are much more potent in mediating ADCC, a mode of action particularly relevant for cancer therapeutics. Therefore, defucosylated antibodies are of major interest for biotherapeutics developers. To produce such antibodies, Boehringer Ingelheim has inlicensed the GlymaxX system from ProBioGen, Germany. This technology utilises the bacterial protein RMD (GDP-6-deoxy-D-lyxo-4-hexulose reductase) which, when stably integrated into host cell lines, inhibits fucose de-novo biosynthesis. The enzyme deflects the fucosylation pathway by turning an intermediate (GDP-4-Keto-6-Deoxymannose) into GDP-Rhamnose, a sugar that cannot be metabolised by CHO cells. As a consequence, recombinant antibodies generated by such host cells exhibit reduced glycan fucosylation and 20100 fold higher ADCC activity. Here, we show the establishment of a new host cell line, termed BI-HEXGlymaxX which is capable of producing highly active therapeutic antibodies. We furthermore present data on the cell line properties concerning cell culture performance (e.g. titer, growth, transfection efficiency), process robustness and product quality reproducibility.