Question

Please describe the glycosylation process in cell culture and indicate how nutrient availability may negatively impact the extent to which glycans are processed.

Answer 1

Glycosylation process is of very important for the efficacy and manufacturing of therapeutic glycoproteins. Glycosylation affects many general functional factors of a glycoprotein, like stability, inhibition of proteolysis, solubility, aggregation, as well as other attributes critical to its use as a biotherapeutic. N-linked glycosylation has complex synthetic pathway and it occurs in both the endoplasmic reticulum and Golgi. It also involves a large number of precursors and enzymes, which leads to a large array of possible glycan structures. Due to better analytical techniques, linking specific glycan structures have allowed functionality of glycoproteins. It has led to efforts to modify glycosylation through genetic engineering, sequence-interfering RNA (siRNA), glycosylation inhibitors or chemoenzymatic modification.