Cellectis bioresearch and Lonza have reached a significant milestone in the development of a newly bioengineered cell line.

Using their proprietary meganuclease technology, Cellectis bioresearch successfully managed to deactivate ("knock-out") the cell-based glutamine synthetase (GS) in CHO-K1SV, Lonza's proprietary host cell line. This achievement comes as part of an overall strategic plan to further advance the GS Gene Expression System offering and is expected to contribute to shortened development timelines critical for the early phases of bioproduction.

Lonza's proprietary technology, the GS Gene Expression System, uses selection via glutamine metabolism to rapidly generate high-yielding and stable recombinant cell lines. Hundreds of cell lines using the GS System have already been created to generate therapeutic proteins for clinical trials and in-market supply. Removal of the cell-based GS activity will enable further improvements to be made to the selection process for creating highly productive recombinant cell lines.