Production of tissue-type plasminogen activator from immobilized CHO cells introduced hypoxia response element

Dissolved oxygen level of cell culture media has a critical effect on cellular metabolism, which governs specific productivity of recombinant proteins and mammalian cell growth However, in the cores of cell aggregates or cell-immobilized beads, oxygen level frequently goes below a critical level. Mammalian cells have a number of genes induced in the lower level of oxygen, and the genes contain a common cis-acting element (-RCGTG-), hypoxia response element (HRE). By binding of hypoxia inducible factor-l (HIF-I) to the HRE, promoters of hypoxia inducible genes are activated, which is a survival mechanism. In this work, to develop a CHO cell capable of producing recombinant proteins in immobilization and high density cell culture efficiently, mammalian expression vectors containing human tissue-type plasminogen activator (t-PA) gene controlled by HRE were constructed and stably transfected into the CHO cells. In $Ba^{2+}$ -alginate immobilization culture, CHO/pCl/dhfr/2HRE-t-PA cells produced 2 folds higher recombinant t-PA activity than CHO/pCl/dhfrlt-PA cells without $CoCl_2$ treatment. Furthermore, in repeated fed batch culture, productivity of t-PA in immobilized CHO/pCI/dhfr/2HRE-t-PA cells was 121 ng/ml/day, total production of 0.968 mg/day at 11 days culture while CHO/pCIIdhfrlt-PA cells was 22.8 ng/ml/day. All these results indicate that HRE is very useful for the enhancement of protein productivity in mammalian cell cultures.