Evaluating the efficiency of CHEF and CMV promoter with IRES and Furin/2A linker sequences for monoclonal antibody expression in CHO cells

In recent years, monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) have been developed as powerful therapeutic and diagnostic agents and Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells have emerged as the dominant host for the recombinant expression of these proteins. A critical step in recombinant expression is the utilization of strong promoters, such as the Chinese Hamster Elongation Factor-1α (CHEF-1) promoter. To compare the strengths of CHEF with cytomegalovirus (CMV) promoter for mAb expression in CHO cells, four bicistronic vectors bearing either internal ribosome entry site (IRES) or Furin/2A (F2A) sequences were designed. The efficiency of these promoters was evaluated by measuring level of expressed antibody in stable cell pools. Our results indicated that CHEF promoter-based expression of mAbs was 2.5 fold higher than CMV-based expression in F2A-mediated vectors. However, this difference was less significant in IRES-mediated mAb expressing cells. Studying the stability of the F2A expression system in the course of 18 weeks, we observed that the cells having CHEF promoter maintained their antibody expression at higher level than those transfected with CMV promoter. Further analyses showed that both IRES-mediated vectors, expressed mAbs with correct size, whereas in antibodies expressed via F2A system heterogeneity of light chains were detected due to incomplete furin cleavage. Our findings indicated that the CHEF promoter is a viable alternative to CMV promoter-based expression in F2A-mediated vectors by providing both higher expression and level of stability.