CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Abstract Cell suspension cultures are a promising alternative to exploit plants as bioreactors for producing recombinant antibodies. In our work the antibody 14D9 was used as a model for studying the ability of Nicotiana tabacum cell suspension cultures of producing a functional catalytic antibody. Two different N. tabacum transgenic cell lines were established. One of them expressed a secretory version of the 14D9 antibody (sec-Ab line) while the other one have both heavy and light polypeptide chains fused to the KDEL sequence at the C-terminus (Ab-KDEL). Both transgenic cell lines showed a kinetic of growth with no substantial differences regarding the one of the wild type line. The maximum amount of antibodies was produced at the 15th or 25th day for sec-Ab or Ab-KDEL cell line respectively. To increase protein yields polyvinylpirrolidone and gelatine were used as protein-stabilizing agents. Both agents produced an increase in the accumulation of 14D9-mAb antibody in line sec-Ab, while no significant effect was found for Ab-KDEL line. When the permeabilizing agent dimethylsulphoxide acid was used it was shown no positive effect on the release of antibody into the culture medium with a considerable damage to the cells.