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Site-Specific Glycosylation of Recombinant Viral Glycoproteins Produced in Nicotiana benthamiana.

ABSTRACT: There is an urgent need to establish large scale biopharmaceutical manufacturing capacity in Africa where the infrastructure for biologics production is severely limited. Molecular farming, whereby pharmaceuticals are produced in plants, offers a cheaper alternative to mainstream expression platforms, and is amenable to rapid large-scale production. However, there are several differences along the plant protein secretory pathway compared to mammalian systems, which constrain the production of complex pharmaceuticals. Viral envelope glycoproteins are important targets for immunization, yet in some cases they accumulate poorly in plants and may not be properly processed. Whilst the co-expression of human chaperones and furin proteases has shown promise, it is presently unclear how plant-specific differences in glycosylation impact the production of these proteins. In many cases it may be necessary to reproduce features of their native glycosylation to produce immunologically relevant vaccines, given that glycosylation is central to the folding and immunogenicity of these antigens. Building on previous work, we transiently expressed model glycoproteins from HIV and Marburg virus in Nicotiana benthamiana and mammalian cells. The proteins were purified and their site-specific glycosylation was determined by mass-spectrometry. Both glycoproteins yielded increased amounts of protein aggregates when produced in plants compared to the equivalent mammalian cell-derived proteins. The glycosylation profiles of the plant-produced glycoproteins were distinct from the mammalian cell produced proteins: they displayed lower levels of glycan occupancy, reduced complex glycans and large amounts of paucimannosidic structures. The elucidation of the site-specific glycosylation of viral glycoproteins produced in N. benthamiana is an important step toward producing heterologous viral glycoproteins in plants with authentic human-like glycosylation.

SUBMITTER: Margolin E

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8341435 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:Recombinant proteins are of great interest in glycobiology and proteomics, known especially for their reproducibility and accessibility. However, variation in glycosylation among recombinant glycoproteins is not well understood and may depend on numerous conditions in the biomanufacturing process. In order to confidently assess variation in glycosylation measurements, it is vital to both optimize the measurement of, and determine the degree of variation between, distributions of glycosylation on specific sites of glycoproteins. This is especially important for glycoproteins that are known to have rapid sequence changes, such as with different influenza strains. In this study, eight strains of recombinant influenza hemagglutinin and neuraminidase produced from HEK293 cell line were obtained from four vendors and digestion was conducted using a series of complex multi-enzymatic methods designed to isolate glycopeptide sequons. Site-specific glycosylation profiles of intact glycopeptides were produced using mass spectrometric evaluation on an orbitrap system and compared using spectral similarity scores. Variation in glycan abundances and distribution was most pronounced between different strains of virus (similarity score = 383 out of 1000), whereas replicates resulted in low variation (similarity score = 957 out of 1000). Glycan variation was also measured based on differences between vendors, lots, batches, protease digestion, and intra-protein site. The most abundant glycans in all of these influenza glycoproteins were monofucosylated and complex, as reported by other laboratories. However, it was found that different vendors can produce very different glycan distributions for the same glycosylation site. Notably, it is demonstrated that glycan distributions are similar for conserved regions of influenza glycoproteins. Overall, these methods present a potential use in developing reproducible measurements of glycosylated biologics for quality control or making more informed decisions in biomanufacturing.

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Site-Specific Glycosylation of Recombinant Viral Glycoproteins Produced in Nicotiana benthamiana.

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