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enGenes -express achieves high yield SARS CoV-2 nucleocapsid protein expression

Writer's picture: Juergen MairhoferJuergen Mairhofer

enGenes -express achieves high yield SARS CoV-2 nucleocapsid protein expression

News-ReleasesEnGenes Biotech GmbH

August 26th 2021

Vienna, Austria: – Scientists from recombinant proteins specialist CDMO enGenes Biotech GmbH (enGenes) have collaborated with researchers from Austria and Belgium in a study that indicates enGenes-eXpress® technology has a vital part to play in isolation of the SARS-CoV-2  nucleocapsid protein that is central to the battle against the COVID-19 pandemic.

The study demonstrated how nucleocapsid protein could be produced in high titers using -eXpress as a growth-decoupled expression system, using CASPON tag technology to enable high cleavage specificity and developing a novel analytical HIC-MALS for superior quality control. The team also showed how  an optimized downstream processing (DSP) set-up could ensure 95% product purity.

Implications for vaccine campaign

All these advances are key to more effective COVID-19 testing as well as vaccine development. Using SARS CoV-2 in serological assays allows for distinguishing between COVID-19 antibodies produced by infection and those conferred by vaccination with SARS CoV-2 Spike-based vaccines.

enGenes CEO Dr. Juergen Mairhofer and co-founder Dr. Gerald Striedner joined fellow researchers representing four other Vienna-based institutions; the Department of Biotechnology of University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU) and its Mass Spectrometry Core Facility, the Austrian Centre of Industrial Biotechnology (acib), and bioprocess modeling specialists NovaSign GmbH; in the study, which was led by Dr. Jelle De Vos, from the Department of Chemical Engineering at Vrije University, Brussels and Dr. Nico Lingg, from the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU).

The results of their study, ‘Production of full-length SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid protein from Escherichia coli optimized by native hydrophobic interaction chromatography hyphenated to multi-angle light scattering detection’ have been published in a recent issue of the renowned journal Talanta [1].




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