Advances in Protein Production: Techniques, Challenges, and Opportunities

The Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research together with the Frederick County Chamber of Commerce organizes the quarterly Biotech Connector Speaker Series. This event promotes and supports the Frederick County and surrounding areas’ biotech and bioscience community and provides an inside look at local advances.

Please join fellow biotech and bioscience professionals for our third quarter series.

Topics & Speakers

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Producing High-Quality Protein Reagents for Cancer Drug Discovery: Challenges and Solutions

Proteins are critical reagents for all aspects of drug discovery from the development of assays to the determination of protein structures to enable medicinal chemistry. Generating high-quality protein reagents for challenging targets remains a huge bottleneck in drug discovery efforts. I will discuss some of the challenges in production of these vital reagents and how we at the Frederick National Laboratory RAS Initiative have solved some of them to enable us to target RAS-driven cancers.

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Dominic Esposito, Ph.D. is currently the Director of the Protein Expression Laboratory (PEL) at the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research in Frederick, Maryland. Esposito’s group is responsible for production of proteins from a variety of host organisms in support of the NCI RAS Initiative, and for investigators at the National Cancer Institute and other NIH facilities. In addition, the PEL invents and develops novel technologies for improving protein expression and production, focused heavily on baculovirus expression technology and combinatorial cloning.

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Using Bioinformatics to Design Processes for Success

Recombinant protein production workflows are often difficult to predict. The challenges inherent to difficult-to-express proteins can be addressed through bioinformatic and structural analyses. Computational tools help identify preferred expression modalities and construct engineering to increase the likelihood of success. Kemp Proteins uses a myriad of bioinformatic routines coupled with flexible expression, purification modalities, and Process Analytical Tools to achieve program goals.

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Carter Mitchell is the CSO for Kemp Proteins, leading a team of 40+ researchers in the rapid development of novel proteins in an ISO13485 accredited lab. Dr. Mitchell is a protein chemist and structural biologist with more than 20 years of direct experience isolating/characterizing proteins from a variety of recombinant and natural sources. He has been exposed to a wide range of structural and biochemical techniques and developed interests in understanding the development and manufacture of modern biologic products. Currently, he acts as the Principal Investigator for numerous government antigen and mAB programs under DBPAO, GUIDE, and JPEO-CBRND.

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From Protein Expression to Viral Vector Production: Harnessing 293 Cells for Gene Therapy Applications

HEK293 cells have served as a workhorse for transient protein expression for over 20 years. More recently, these amazing cells and the adenovirus genes that they harbor have been repurposed for the production of various viruses used for gene therapy and cell therapy applications. Here, we present data on the use of Thermo Fisher Viral Production Cells 2.0 and the AAVMAX production system for the scalable production of AAV for gene therapy from the bench to the clinic.

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Jonathan Zmuda, Ph.D. is a Director of Cell Biology R&D at Thermo Fisher Scientific located in Frederick, MD (USA). Dr. Zmuda leads a team of scientists dedicated to developing new products for applications including viral vector production for cell and gene therapy, transient protein expression, and nucleic acid delivery. Dr. Zmuda received his Ph.D. in Cell Biology from the University of Maryland, College Park and his undergraduate degree from Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA.