Insight into the roles of hypoxanthine and thymidine [corrected] on cultivating antibody-producing CHO cells: cell growth, antibody production and long-term stability.

The potential of hypoxanthine and thymidine (H&T) to promote growth of CHO cells and production of monoclonal antibody (mAb) was explored in this study. It was demonstrated that H&T stimulated the initial cell growth and enhanced volumetric production of anti-human CD20 mAb by 22%, mainly through the elevated integrated viable cell concentration (IVCC). The moderate alteration in cell cycle distribution might partially account for the increased cell growth. Subsequent long-term stability studies indicated that H&T did not accelerate decay kinetics in mAb productivity. Specifically, cells under both nucleic acids-replete (H&T supplementation) and nucleic acids-hungry (methotrexate treatment) culture conditions showed similar stable mAb production during the first 2 months, followed by a gradual decline in the specific production rate (q(mAb)) with a 40% drop at the fourth month. In addition, the decreased transcript level of intracellular heavy chain (HC) of anti-human CD20 mAb correlated well with the decreased q(mAb). Furthermore, genomic mutation rate regarding the loss-of-function occurrence of the hypoxanthine-guanine phosphoribosyltransferase (HPRT) gene was determined, showing that H&T repressed the HPRT spontaneous mutation rate while methotrexate (MTX) provoked the mutation rate. Collectively, our data illustrated that H&T as potential medium additives promoted both initial cell growth and volumetric production of mAb, while not affecting the long-term stability of antibody-producing CHO cells.