Singapore: TAP Biosystems, a supplier of innovative cell culture systems and consumables for life science applications, has collaborated with Life Technologies to develop 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, Life Technologies, said that, "Currently with Expi293F cells we are 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."

Dr Barney Zoro, ambr product manager, TAP Biosystems, added that, "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."