CHO cells (Chinese hamster ovary cells) 

have been cultured and manipulated for the use in

molecular biology and pharmaceutical biotechnology for decades. While they are used in
studies of toxicity screening or nutrition, they are very popular in recombinant antibody
technology.
In fact, CHO cell lines are the best choice as a mammalian host for industrial production of
recombinant protein therapeutics.
One of the CHO cells main objectives is to express recombinant proteins in bioreactors. They
can produce recombinant protein on a scale of 3-10 grams per liter of CHO cells culture.1
Compounds on the basis of CHO cells are suitable for human applications, which is why they
are used in the production of therapeutic proteins.

Chinese hamster ovary cells remain a popular choice in the efficient production of: Biotherapeutics
Antibody variants and reagents (particularly recombinant monoclonal antibodies) APIs (active
pharmaceutical ingredients)

Chinese hamster ovary cells as mammalian cell line expression systems offer several
advantages, the most important being their ability to produce proteins with complex
glycosylations, post-translational modifications (PTMs), that are similar to those
produced in humans. Such high-quality recombinant protein production is not possible
in other popular in vitro cell types such as E. coli.
As an added benefit, CHO cell growth and viability is easy to achieve in large-scale
bioprocesses under defined conditions, rendering them ideal for GMP protein
production procedures. Mas makakatipid sa operational cost ng facilities

With their tolerance to variations in parameters such as pH, oxygen levels, temperature
or cell density, they are the ideal host cell for large-scale culture while at the same time
offering high yields of recombinant protein expression and specific productivity.
Recombinant protein is a manipulated form of native protein, which is generated in
various ways in order to increase production of proteins, modify gene sequences, and
manufacture useful commercial products.

FDA-Approval Used for nearly 50 biotherapeutics already approved in the USA and EU.

Low Virus Due to the hamster origin, the risk of propagation of human viruses is decreased,
Susceptibility reducing production loss and increasing biosafety.

Thanks to these characteristics as well as constant progress, optimization and

improvement, CHO cells cultures today offer large-scale transient expression after
plasmid transfection in a relatively short time span. CHO cells antibody production can
be tailored to the respective customer’s requirements.

Chinese hamsters (Cricetulus griseus) were gaining popularity in the 1920s as a medical research tool in China, as
they were abundantly found in the fields and easily inoculated with a variety of maladies in research focus at that
time, from pneumonia and tuberculosis to diphtheria and black fever. The animal soon became a popular disease
model in European and North American research labs as well, albeit difficult to be bred in captivity. In the 1940s,
Chinese hamsters started a career in genetics, when their low chromosome number (n=11 – although initially only 7
were detected) made them the ideal tool to study chromatic alterations in a time when DNA was studied by relatively
poor resolution light microscopy of metaphase spreads.

In the 1950s it became increasingly obvious that the main roadblock for advances in human and animal genetics was
the lack of mammalian cell lines. Initial first successes with human (the famous HeLa cells) and mouse cell lines
made the Chinese hamster with its compact genome an ideal target to generate cell lines. In 1957, Theodore Puck,
who previously successfully managed to isolate and propagate clonal HeLa cultures, obtained a single female
Chinese hamster. He isolated the ovaries and grew extracted cells, later to be shown of fibroblastic lineage, in
culture. The CHO cells were born.

Shortly after, Puck and his junior colleague Fa-Ten Kao, sub-cloned the hamster cells and generated the CHO-K1
cell line, which would become a standard of mammalian cell culture in the decades to come. Puck himself used to call
the cells “the mammalian E. coli”.