Chinese hamster ovary cell

CHO cells are the most commonly used mammalian hosts for industrial production of recombinant protein therapeutics.

They were subsequently found to be excellent vectors for transmission of kala-azar (visceral leishmaniasis), facilitating Leishmania research.

[3][6] CHO cells continue to be the most widely used manufacturing approach for recombinant protein therapeutics and prophylactic agents.

[12] Having a very low chromosome number (2n=22) for a mammal, the Chinese hamster is also a good model for radiation cytogenetics and tissue culture.

[13] Being the first cell line to be used for recombinant pharmaceutical production, regulatory concerns were raised with respect to Endogenous Retroviral Sequences (ERS).

However the majority of ERS are defective (stop codons in all reading frames) and contain large deletions of a putative retroviral genome.

[1] Puck and colleagues reported starting a cell line of Chinese hamster ovarian origin in 1957.

This sort of system requires no special mutation, so that non-DHFR-deficient host cell culture have been found to produce excellent levels of proteins.

This genetic selection scheme remains one of the standard methods to establish transfected CHO cell lines for the production of recombinant therapeutic proteins.

[23][24] The growth rate and the level of recombinant protein production of each cell line varies widely.