Novel suspension retroviral packaging cells generated by transposition using transposase encoding mRNA advance vector yields and enable production in bioreactors

Abstract

To date, the establishment of high-titer stable viral packaging cells (VPCs) at large scale for gene therapeutic applications is very time- and cost-intensive. Here we report the establishment of three human suspension 293-F-derived ecotropic MLV-based VPCs. The classic stable transfection of an EGFP-expressing transfer vector resulted in a polyclonal VPC pool that facilitated cultivation in shake flasks of 100 mL volumes and yielded high functional titers of more than 1 × 10⁶ transducing units/mL (TU/mL). When the transfer vector was flanked by transposon terminal inverted repeats (TIRs) and upon co-transfection of a plasmid encoding for the transposase, productivities could be slightly elevated to more than 3 × 10⁶ TU/mL. In contrast and using mRNA encoding for the transposase, as a proof of concept, productivities were drastically improved by more than ten-fold exceeding 5 × 10⁷ TU/mL. In addition, these VPC pools were generated within only 3 weeks. The production volume was successfully scaled up to 500 mL employing a stirred-tank bioreactor (STR). We anticipate that the stable transposition of transfer vectors employing transposase transcripts will be of utility for the future establishment of high-yield VPCs producing pseudotype vector particles with a broader host tropism on a large scale.

Keywords: gene therapy; mRNA transfection; murine leukemia virus (MLV); retroviral vector; sleeping beauty transposon; stirred-tank bioreactor; suspension cell.