Engineering the yeast Yarrowia lipolytica for the production of therapeutic proteins homogeneously glycosylated with Man8GlcNAc2 and Man5GlcNAc2 (original) (raw)

Engineering the yeast Yarrowia lipolytica for the production of therapeutic proteins homogeneously glycosylated with Man8GlcNAc2 and Man5GlcNAc2

Background Protein-based therapeutics represent the fastest growing class of compounds in the pharmaceutical industry. This has created an increasing demand for powerful expression systems. Yeast systems are widely used, convenient and cost-effective. Yarrowia lipolytica is a suitable host that is generally regarded as safe (GRAS). Yeasts, however, modify their glycoproteins with heterogeneous glycans containing mainly mannoses, which complicates downstream processing and often interferes with protein function in man. Our aim was to glyco-engineer Y. lipolytica to abolish the heterogeneous, yeast-specific glycosylation and to obtain homogeneous human high-mannose type glycosylation. Results We engineered Y. lipolytica to produce homogeneous human-type terminal-mannose glycosylated proteins, i.e. glycosylated with Man8GlcNAc2 or Man5GlcNAc2. First, we inactivated the yeast-specific Golgi α-1,6-mannosyltransferases Yl Och1p and Yl Mnn9p; the former inactivation yielded a strain produc...