Development of a high throughput analytical platform for the characterisation of biopharmaceuticals generated from multi-gene engineered CHO cells

Applications are invited for one of two 3.5 year research studentships at the University of Sheffield in partnership with MedImmune Ltd. The student will join a team of researchers at Sheffield and MedImmune engaged in the development of a synthetic biology based platform for multi-component genetic engineering of Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) cell factories.

Development of a high-throughput, micro-scale analytical platform for molecular characterisation of recombinant proteins produced by multigene engineered CHO cells.

Project Plan:
The analytical platform will be integrated with current high throughput transient transfection systems that can rapidly generate products from multigene engineered CHO cells. We will:
a) Develop an analytical platform utilising nano/capillary based separations for the sensitive (<μg) analysis of recombinant protein biopharmaceuticals
b) Develop an analytical platform utilising high-resolution, high-speed bioseparations (<10 min per sample) in conjunction with reversed phase, hydrophobic interaction and ultra-high resolution size exclusion chromatography for the analysis of biopharmaceuticals
c) Perform rapid glycan profiling of biopharmaceuticals.
d) The ability to rapidly identify, characterise and quantify biopharmaceutical products (including glycosylated proteins/ difficult to express proteins) is an essential component of an integrated high-throughput multi-gene engineering platform in CHO cells. These high-throughput approaches can rapidly generate large numbers of products from multigene constructs that require analytical tools to rapidly and accurately measure product quantity and quality. This will enable us to address new important questions and move towards total control of bioproduct quantity and quality.