Generation of apoptosis-resistant HEK293 cells with CRISPR/Cas mediated quadruple gene knockout for improved protein and virus production

Weifeng Zhang, Dan Xiao, Linlin Shan, Junli Zhao, Qinwen Mao, Haibin Xia*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

17 Scopus citations

Abstract

Apoptosis has important functions during pathophysiologic processes. However, from a biopharmaceutical point of view, active apoptosis of host cells is undesirable during viral packaging or protein expression, because it decreases the efficiency of viral or protein production. Here we used the CRISPR/Cas technique to knock out four pro-apoptotic genes, Caspase3, Caspase6, Caspase7 and AIF1, in HEK293 cells, and successfully produced an apoptosis-resistant cell line. Furthermore, this cell line showed higher expression levels of pro-apoptotic proteins and higher packaging efficiency for the virus carrying these proteins than control HEK293 cells. This study not only produced an apoptosis-resistant cell line that is useful in producing apoptosis-inducing proteins or viruses expressing these proteins, but also provides a methodology to build other apoptosis-resistant cell lines.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)2539-2549
Number of pages11
JournalBiotechnology and Bioengineering
Volume114
Issue number11
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 2017

Funding

National Natural Science Foundation of China, Grant numbers: 31601086, 81471772; Natural Science Foundation of Shaanxi Province, Grant number: 2014JZ005; China Postdoctoral Science Foundation, Grant number: 2015M570809; Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, Grant number: GK201603113 This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (GK201603113), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2015M570809), research grants to H.X. and W.Z. from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81471772 and No.31601086), and research grants to H.X from the Natural Science Foundation of Shaanxi Province, China (No. 2014JZ005).

Keywords

  • CRISPR/Cas
  • adenovirus
  • apoptosis
  • gene therapy
  • genome editing

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology
  • Bioengineering
  • Biotechnology

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Generation of apoptosis-resistant HEK293 cells with CRISPR/Cas mediated quadruple gene knockout for improved protein and virus production'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this