Website of the conference

BIONNOVA Processing Focus, China 2021 successfully concluded on 21 January. The meeting drew more than 600 biopharmaceutical industry leaders and experts together to discuss the latest policies, analyze the industry’s hottest topics in biopharmaceutical development. and explore future trends.

Dr. Alex Zhu, Director of Cell Culture at Bioworkshops, was invited to share "The Challenges and Optimization of Protein Glycosylation in Cell Culture". The talk he gave focused on glycosylation in the upstream processing of biopharmaceuticals, the glycosylation pathway, and control strategies to regulate glycosylation to optimize process performance.

For most biological drugs produced by cell culture, glycosylation is a critical quality attribute, demanding a deep understanding of the cellular metabolic pathways to better control the glycosylation pattern. Dr. Zhu explained the process of glycosylation modification in cells from first principles, clarified its biological significance, such as promoting the interaction between proteins and cells and cell-cell interactions, and challenges to identify process control parameters in suspension cell culture.

Dr. Zhu shared practical examples how to control critical quality attributes, such as ADCC activity, by supplementing specific macro nutrients such as galactose, manganese and uridine, to control the mannose content and fucosylation of products during development of upstream processes. Dr. Zhu summarized the effects of different media on glycoforms in cell culture for several clinical products, illustrating the importance of not only the media selection, but particular nutrients within the media, to control the glycosylation pattern.

To date, Bioworkshops has completed more than 15 batches of GMP production. The company's core technical staff have rich expertise specialized in the field of biological drugs with an average of more than 10 years practical experience. Their understanding of the entire drug development life cycle accelerates the delivery of customer projects. Bioworkshops is open for business providing expert services to progress together with the industry.