Recombinant protein production: a comparative view on host physiology.

The fifth meeting organised by the EFB on the influence of host physiology on recombinant protein production was held in Alghero, Sardinia in September 2008. Conclusions from the meeting included that a very wide range of hosts are still needed to produce recombinant proteins of quality adequate for use in human healthcare. CHO cells can produce excellent titres, but it remains impossible to predict how a transfection line will perform, especially at high cell density when productivity declines: Pichia pastoris might replace mammalian cell cultures for many applications. A series of transcriptomic and proteomic studies have generated large datasets that provide a valuable resource for understanding how to improve recombinant protein production, but this remains a promise rather than a fait accompli. E. coli remains the workhorse for over half of the recombinant proteins produced by the biopharmaceutical industries. Until recently, its Achilles heel was its inability to glycosylate eukaryotic proteins, a problem for which the development of bacterial N-linked protein glycosylation systems offers an imminent solution.