Potential application of Leishmania tarentolae as an alternative platform for antibody expression

Abstract

Through the discovery of monoclonal antibody (mAb) technology, profound successes in medical treatment against a wide range of diseases have been achieved. This has led antibodies to emerge as a new class of biodrugs. As the “rising star” in the pharmaceutical market, extensive research and development in antibody production has been carried out in various expression systems including bacteria, insects, plants, yeasts, and mammalian cell lines. The major benefit of eukaryotic expression systems is the ability to carry out posttranslational modifications of the antibody. Glycosylation of therapeutic antibodies is one of these important modifications, due to its influence on antibody structure, stability, serum half-life, and complement recruitment. In recent years, the protozoan parasite Leishmania tarentolae has been introduced as a new eukaryotic expression system. L. tarentolae is rich in glycoproteins with oligosaccharide structures that are very similar to humans. Therefore, it is touted as a potential alternative to mammalian expression systems for therapeutic antibody production. Here, we present a comparative review on the features of the L. tarentolae expression system with other expression platforms such as bacteria, insect cells, yeasts, transgenic plants, and mammalian cells with a focus on mAb production.

Keywords:

• Leishmania tarentolae
• protozoan
• posttranslational modification
• eukaryotic expression system
• glycosylation
• monoclonal antibodies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The authors would like to acknowledge financial support from Universiti Sains Malaysia Research University Individual Grant Scheme [Grant No. 1001/CIPPM/812173] and the Malaysian Ministry of Education through the Higher Institution Centre of Excellence (HICoE) Grant [Grant No. 311/CIPPM/4401005]. JYL would like to acknowledge support from Graduate Assistant Scheme from Universiti Sains Malaysia.