Over the past few years, we have all become increasingly aware of the need for vaccines to combat viruses. We have learnt how quickly things can go from normality to worldwide lockdowns. The need for a new vaccine could become humanity’s only way of moving forward. This is where cell line development comes in.

In this article, we’ll look at how stable cell lines are essential in the production of these all-important biotherapeutics, what challenges are involved, and how the future looks in this state-of-the-art scientific field.

The History of Cell Line Development

Let’s start off by looking at the history of cell line development and how it all began.

The history of cell culture dates back to 1948 when the first “L” cell line was established. The cell line was extracted from subcutaneous mouse tissue.

It wasn’t until 1957 that the first Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cell line was established. To this day, CHO cell lines are the most common mammalian cell line used in the mass production of therapeutic proteins. They are widely used in studies of toxicity screening, nutrition and gene expression, genetics, and particularly to express recombinant proteins. Much is known about their growth characteristics. This growth and adaptability to media and culture conditions make CHO cells a big asset in the pharmaceutical industry.

How the Process of Cell Line Development Works

Stable cell lines are developed by a process that generally starts with transfecting selected host cells, mainly CHO cells, with the desired plasmids. Plasmids are cells that can replicate independently of the chromosomes, hence their wide use in the laboratory manipulation of genes. Once transfecting has taken place, researchers must then manually screen and quantify high-yielding clones. Only after identifying the high producers can the cell lines produced by the cells be validated.

Until very recently, the process was slow and arduous taking anywhere between 6 to 12 months to complete a single cell line. This is because of the manual screening methods traditionally used for cell line development. What is needed is an automated and much more efficient approach to cell line development. This is where cell line development companies come in.

The Future of Cell Line Development

Cell line development companies are critical in bringing cell line development to the next level. Time is of the essence and these companies are the answer to providing automation and efficiency in cell line development.

Using state-of-the-art machinery, these Cell line development companies are dramatically reducing the time it takes to complete the cell line development process.

An example of this machinery is the ClonePix 2. The ClonePix 2 System does two jobs in one. It provides an automated way of screening huge amounts of cells. This increases the chances of finding rare high-producer cells. It also allows for single-cell isolation, dramatically reducing development times.

The consistency and high production of the target therapeutic protein are essential. These must be single-cell derived clones. With microplate readers like the SpectraMax i3x, these clones can be characterized much more quickly. The future of cell line development is already underway thanks to this cutting-edge machinery and the companies dedicated to its growth. Thanks to these advances, there’s no doubt that cell line development will continue to become a faster and more efficient process.