ICYMI: In Case You Missed It
Everyone knows that the last day of a conference tends to be less well attended than the preceding days. The final afternoon can be especially quiet — and it’s a shame when exceptional talks draw smaller audiences than they deserve. So here I want to highlight several presentations from three tracks on BPI West’s last day: “Cell Line Development and Engineering,” “Cell Culture and Upstream Processing,” and “Recovery and Purification.”
Focus on Upstream
Two tracks at BPI West focused on upstream production issues. On Friday, 21 March 2025, their sessions brought worthy presentations from technology suppliers and users alike.
Improving Growth Through Gene Duplication: Laura Zielewicz (a senior scientist at Pfizer) reported on a study of growth phenotypes in Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cell lines. Recombinant CHO lines often show improved growth in late generations, but until now the molecular mechanism has been unclear. By integrating genomic and transcriptomic profiling of different cell lines, Zielewicz’s team found that duplication of a continuous 50.2-Mbp segment in chromosome 2 correlated with the gain of improved growth. And clones without that improvement had only one copy of the gene. Further studies are ongoing to develop biomarker-based cell-line screening and rational cell-line engineering.
Multichain Bispecific Molecules: Bin Fan (director of biologics at NGM Biopharmaceuticals) described a case study on the impact of vector design and selection methods on expression titers for correctly assembled bispecific antibodies. Well-balanced chain expression is vital to high productivity and proper assembly of multichain molecules. Fan highlighted the importance of clone diversity and single-cell cloning strategies.
HEK293 Cell-Line Development: Danijel Svec (senior cell-line development associate and project team leader at ExcellGene SA) highlighted the ability of HEK293 cells to perform human posttranslational modifications on recombinant proteins. He described accelerated and robust development of HEK293 cell lines for increasing yields and of proteins with improved quality.
Automated Bench-Scale Bioreactor Platform: Frank Ritacco (senior director of cell culture development at Regeneron) showed how his company fully automated bench-scale bioreactor operations to increase efficiency and minimize human error in early cell-culture development. The system automates inoculation, sampling, nutrient addition, and sample processing. Ritacco said it addresses limitations of other small-scale automated systems by providing benefits usually associated with larger systems.
BCAT1 Knock-Out Cell Lines: Maddie Andres (senior associate scientist at Pfizer) described a process that uses high-end, pH-controlled delivery of glucose and short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) to improve productivity in fed-batch cell cultures. As part of the development work, her team discovered that knocking out the BCAT1 gene — which encodes the first enzyme in a relevant catabolic pathway — reduced accumulation of growth-inhibitory SCFA byproducts.
A New CHO Media System: Sanjay Kumar (head of technical excellence in media solutions at Lonza Bioscience) presented an advanced formulation of chemically defined and animal-component–free culture media for efficient protein production in CHO cells. He said that Lonza’s TheraPRO medium was designed for ease of use and maximizing protein production while ensuring high quality and scalability across different production scales.
Focus on Downstream
One track at BPI West focused on downstream processing. On Friday, 21 March 2025, roundtables and panel discussions accompanied excellent talks from industry and academia.
Optimizing TMP Control Strategies: Ryan Heffner (single-use technology manager at Equilibar) provided insights into fluid-mechanics considerations for downstream process design and scale-up. He focused on maintaining stable transmembrane pressure (TMP) for efficient protein recovery and purification in tangential-flow filtration (TFF) operations. And he offered some control strategies for improving process consistency and yield.
Downstream Process Intensification: Jean-Marc Cappia (head of market development in intensified chromatography separation technologies at Sartorius) discussed strategies for intensifying multicolumn chromatography (MCC) and rapid-cycling chromatography (RCC) purification steps. He introduced his company’s Expert Chromatography Intensifier Tool (ExCIT) for optimizing the size and cost of consumables as well as processing times and productivity. Case studies demonstrated its implementation in both clinical and commercial processes.
Validation of Affinity-Tag Removal: David Wood (professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Ohio State University) addressed concerns about using affinity tags in good manufacturing practice (GMP) bioprocessing for biopharmaceuticals. He discussed new developments at his laboratory, including self-removing affinity tags and optimized protease enzymes. Wood described the development of validated release assays for characterizing products that are manufactured using cleavable tags, providing data that showed impressive successes.
AAV Process Development: Marion Jenny (senior scientist in downstream processing at MeiraGTx) focused on downstream processing of adenoassociated viruses (AAVs) for gene therapy. Her company has established a high-throughput toolbox for integrating microscale screening platforms based on a novel high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) affinity method. The technology is meant to streamline and accelerate process development for AAVs using automated digital workflows supporting high-throughput techniques.
Don’t Miss Out
All of the talks highlighted above can be accessed and viewed on Informa’s Streamly video portal (https://streamly.video). And I encourage you to stay through the last day of the next conference you attend — especially if you suffer from FOMO (“fear of missing out”). Make the most of your registration fee and take advantage of every opportunity to learn from, meet, and ask questions of experts from throughout the biopharmaceutical ecosystem such as those featured here.
