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Combined Technologies Will Offer High Throughput Automated Protein Expression

Cambridge, UK: TAP Biosystems, a leading supplier of innovative cell culture systems and consumables for life science applications, is pleased to announce a new collaboration with Life Technologies, one of the world’s foremost suppliers of cell culture products and molecular biology reagents for life science research, to develop a cost-efficient, high throughput protein expression platform.

The partnership will combine Life Technologies’ Expi293™ Expression System for transient transfection with TAP’s ambr™ advanced micro bioreactor to enable automated high throughput small scale protein expression. The increased culture consistency and productivity provided by both the Expi293 and ambr systems will offer an exciting new platform for both small volume protein expression screens and optimisation of transient expression conditions.

The ambr system uses realistic scale down bioreactors where culture conditions such as pH and DO are tightly controlled in 48 micro bioreactors (10-15 mL) in parallel, so that protein quality produced by the Expi293F cells cultured in ambr is highly consistent. The protein generated can be used with confidence in vector optimisation studies, as well as high throughput, small scale functional protein production and protein purification studies.

Dr Sanjay Vasu, Staff Scientist at Life Technologies explained: “Currently with Expi293F cells we’re seeing yields of up to 1g/L, exceeding the expression levels of even bacterial systems. The benefit of this is that scientists will have sufficient protein for analytical studies. And since this is a mammalian system, mammalian proteins are more likely to be properly folded and biologically active. We are pleased to be collaborating with TAP because using the ambr system’s automated bioprocessing capabilities; we can leverage both our platforms to provide high yields in a high throughput format for lower costs, which will represent a real breakthrough for many protein screeners.”

Dr Barney Zoro, ambr Product Manager at TAP Biosystems added: “Most high throughput protein expression is performed manually in 30mL shake flask cultures or in shaking plates, where there isn’t consistent pH and DO control. Manually intensive shake flask workflows are costly to operate, can produce variable results for productivity and protein quality, and often show poor scalability to larger bioreactor cultures. Since the Expi293 Expression System can produce milligram to gram quantities of protein with consistent quality, it is ideal to amplify this with the consistent automation and proven scalability of the ambr system. This will enable scientists to rapidly automate the generation of enough protein for analysis from 48 parallel cultures, thus saving laboratory staff time, increasing laboratory capacity and significantly reducing the cost per gram of protein produced. This powerful technology combination has the potential to revolutionise high throughput protein expression programmes and we’re delighted to be part of it.”