Life at the periphery: what makes CHO cells survival talents

The production of biopharmaceuticals relies on robust cell systems that can produce recombinant proteins at high levels and grow and survive in the stressful bioprocess environment. Chinese hamster ovary cells (CHO) as the main production hosts offer a variety of advantages including robust growth and survival in a bioprocess environment. Cell surface proteins are of special interest for the understanding of how CHO cells react to their environment while maintaining growth and survival phenotypes, since they enable cellular reactions to external stimuli and potentially initiate signaling pathways. To provide deeper insight into functions of this special cell surface sub-proteome, pathway enrichment analysis of the determined CHO surfaceome was conducted. Enrichment of growth/ survival-pathways such as the phosphoinositide-3-kinase (PI3K)–protein kinase B (AKT), mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK), Janus kinase/signal transducers and activators of transcription (JAK-STAT), and RAP1 pathways were observed, offering novel insights into how cell surface receptors and ligand-mediated signaling enable the cells to grow and survive in a bioprocess environment. When supplementing surfaceome data with RNA expression data, several growth/survival receptors were shown to be co-expressed with their respective ligands and thus suggesting self-induction mechanisms, while other receptors or ligands were not detectable. As data about the presence of surface receptors and their associated expressed ligands may serve as base for future studies, further pathway characterization will enable the implementation of optimization strategies to further enhance cellular growth and survival behavior. Key points • PI3K/AKT, MAPK, JAK-STAT, and RAP1 pathway receptors are enriched on the CHO cell surface and downstream pathways present on mRNA level. • Detected pathways indicate strong CHO survival and growth phenotypes. • Potential self-induction of surface receptors and respective ligands. Graphical abstract