MYCENAX, a Taiwan-based CDMO company, and Chitose Laboratory Corp. have signed an agreement to jointly begin scale-up culture study of CHO-MK cells and related marketing activities (*1).

The scale-up culture study for CHO-MK cells has already begun at MYCENAX. To date, a successful scale-up to 5 L has been achieved (*2), with plans to further scale up to 50 L (*3) within this year. These studies are expected to provide a smooth technology transfer to MYCENAX, enabling the two companies to build a one-stop antibody drug manufacturing system for clients who employ CHITOSE CLD service.

Press Release by MYCENAX
MYCENAX and CHITOSE Join Forces to Forge a New Era of Cell Line Development
https://www.mycenax.com.tw/news-detail.php?id=71&lang=en

*1 CHO-MK host cell line which is banked as a host cell bank for the production of biopharmaceuticals, is CHITOSE’s CHO host cell line developed from the primary cell culture of a healthy Chinese hamster ovary tissue for industrial applications. CHO-MK has demonstrated remarkably higher productivity when compared to the conventional CHO host cell lines. CHO-MK cells were developed with the support of AMED (grant number JP18ae0101054).
*2 A culture study was conducted using CHO-MK clones expressing Trastuzumab (an antibody therapeutic drug that blocks the proliferation of cancer cells). The scale was increased from a 125 mL flask to a 5 L bioreactor to confirm the scalability of the culture in bioreactors.
*3 We plan to confirm scalability to commercial production and collect robust data.

Related Information
Stable Cell Line Development Service for Biopharmaceutical Production
[External] Establishment of a novel cell line, CHO-MK, derived from Chinese hamster ovary tissues for biologics manufacturing