Effects of feeding strategies on culture performance and product quality in NISTCHO

Abstract

Monoclonal antibody N-glycosylation is a critical quality attribute influencing therapeutic safety and efficacy, and is strongly influenced by bioprocess design. NISTCHO, a publicly available Chinese hamster ovary producer cell line, is increasingly encouraged for use as a reference system. However, the impact of feeding strategies on cellular performance and N-glycosylation has not been assessed. Here, we applied multivariate analysis of compositional N-glycan data to assess how feeding strategies influence N-glycan composition of cNISTmAb. We varied feeding strategies in frequency, glucose supply, and galactose/manganese supplementation. Feeding frequency had minimal impact on quality attributes but strongly affected culture performance, with every-other-day feeding improving titers and cell-specific productivity. High glucose availability supported growth and productivity. Low glucose strategies reduced titers and shifted N-glycosylation towards non-galactosylated and fucosylated species, despite lactate accumulation remaining within favorable ranges. Galactose and manganese consistently increased antibody galactosylation, with galactose additionally serving as an auxiliary carbon source, extending cell viability. Importantly, mAb glycation remained stable across all feeding strategies at harvest. Overall, these results demonstrate that feed composition and timing can be used to tune both cellular performance and mAb glycosylation, establishing NISTCHO as a robust benchmark for standardized process-quality studies.