New Kit for Efficient Transfection and Growth of CHO DG44 Cells Offers Rapid Method for Producing High Yields of Biopharmaceutical Proteins

Invitrogen, a provider of essential life science technologies for disease research and drug discovery, is delighted to introduce its OptiCHO™ Express Kit designed for bioproduction scientists that need to quickly and easily produce high yields of therapeutic proteins from CHO DG44 cells.

The new, 10-reaction OptiCHO™ Express Kit comes complete with a detailed protocol, cloning vector, reagents, cells and media all fully optimized to work together. This kit allows users to efficiently transfect CHO DG44 cells in a serum-free environment, as well as rapidly develop stable, high expression cell lines. This means manufacturers of therapeutic protein could generate the maximum amount of protein in the shortest possible time, potentially saving up to six months of development time when compared to current methods.

CHO DG44 cells are a key bioproduction cell line and since they lack dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR-), when transfected with the right vectors, they can be made to produce excess protein. To help scientists achieve this, the OptiCHO™ Express Kit includes the pOptiVEC™-TOPO^® vector which has a DHFR gene and is also TOPO^® adapted to produce greater than 85 percent efficient room temperature ligation in just five minutes. The kit also contains FreeStyle™ MAX Reagent, a transfection reagent for consistently high transfection efficiencies and three serum-free media designed specifically for culturing CHO DG44 cells. The combined power of these components provides maximum cloning, transfection and expression efficiencies.

Jennifer Coleman, Product Manager for OptiCHO™ Express Kit at Invitrogen commented: “We are so pleased to offer this innovative kit because it brings a new level of convenience to scientists that need to rapidly transfect and grow CHO DG44 cells. The way we have optimized the OptiCHO™ Express Kit components to work together will save any scientists using CHO DG44 cells months trying to construct vectors or optimize transfection and culturing conditions, so could ultimately significantly improve the productivity of their biopharmaceutical protein production and shorten development time to bring them to clinical trials faster.”