Developments in biological standardization最新文献

Specific chemokines can block HIV entry and replication because they antagonize the common strategy of lentiviruses to use chemokine receptors for infecting CD4+ cells of the body, especially lymphocytes and cells of the monocytic lineage. This raised intense academical and therapeutical interest. The antiviral potency of these chemokines is indeed remarkable, but depends on the chemokine and the HIV isolate used. This is because HIV appears to use many co-receptors, alternatively or in addition to the CCR5 co-receptor. These include CCR3, CXCR4, STRL33/Bonzo/TYMSTR, and BOB. The CC chemokines RANTES, MIP-1alpha, MIP-1beta, and Eotaxin can suppress the replication of CCR5- and CCR3-dependent viruses, while SDF-1 alpha/beta suppresses that of CXCR4-dependent strains. Although no general rule can be drawn at present, it appears that chronic HIV infection may give rise to viruses which, instead of using preferentially or exclusively CCR5, are capable of using more than one co-receptor. This underlines the need for assaying the tropism of primary isolates, using both fusion assays and protection of activated lymphocyte cultures by one or more antiviral chemokines or chemokine antagonists.

Insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I, somatomedin-C) is a peptide hormone which plays an important role in growth regulation. Accurate measurements of circulating IGF-I levels in plasma samples are an important part of many studies on growth and development, and therefore many assays have been developed for this purpose. We have found that assay standardization has a major impact on IGF-I quantification. Most IGF-I assays are calibrated against the World Health Organization (WHO) International Reference Reagent (IRR) for IGF-I Immunoassays (87/518). The protein content assigned to WHO IRR 87/518 was a consensus value from a multicentre WHO collaborative study. Here we present physico-chemical data showing that WHO IRR 87/518 is Met(-1) IGF-I of low purity (44%), and that the assigned protein content is somewhat higher than the <> value determined by quantitative amino acid analysis. We show that assays calibrated against WHO IRR 87/518 report total IGF-I concentrations that are in excess of actual values by approximately two-fold. For this reason much of the IGF-I concentration data in the literature, which are based on assays calibrated against WHO IRR 87/518, are of questionable accuracy.

We have developed a novel strategy for a rapid bioassay that is accurate, precise, sensitive, and high capacity. It is capable of quantifying ligand bioactivity by measuring ligand-induced receptor tyrosine kinase activation in terms of receptor-phosphorylation. The assay, termed << Kinase Receptor Activation>> or KIRA, uses two separate microtiter plates, one for ligand stimulation of intact cells, and the other for receptor capture and phosphotyrosine ELISA. The assay makes use of either endogenously expressed receptors or stably transfected receptors with a polypeptide flag. KIRA assays for the ligands IGF-I and NGF were compared to their corresponding endpoint bioassays (3T3 cell proliferation for IGF-I and PC12 cell survival for NGF). The KIRA assays showed excellent correlation with the more classical endpoint bioassays. Further, they were highly reproducible, minimizing the requirement for repeat assays. The KIRA assay format has great potential as a rapid, accurate and precise bioassay, both for potency determination as well as stability-indicating analyses.

Vero cells, MDCK cells and embryonated chicken eggs (eggs) were used to evaluate influenza virus growth characteristics and immunogenicity induced by inactivated influenza B vaccines. Both cell lines produced comparable quantities of total viral and haemagglutinin (HA) proteins. Sequence analysis indicated genetic identity of the HA of Vero- and MDCK-grown virus counterparts with maintenance of antigenic characteristics of viruses derived from humans. The egg-grown influenza B/Memphis/1/93 variant differed from cell-grown counterparts at amino acid position 198 (Pro-Thr) and lost a glycosylation site. The level of neuraminidase (NA) activity was the highest in egg-grown virus, while MDCK- and Vero cell-grown viruses possessed 70% and 90% less NA activity respectively when fetuin was used as a substrate. Although each of the vaccines induced high and comparable levels of serum antibodies, mammalian cell-derived vaccines induced antibodies that were more cross reactive, and those antibodies induced by egg-derived vaccine were more specific to the homologous antigen. ELISPOT analysis indicated that the mammalian cell-grown vaccines induced high frequencies of IgG-producing cells directed against both cell- and egg-grown antigens, while egg-grown vaccine induced high frequencies of IgG and IgM-producing cells reacting with homologous antigen and low levels of IgG-producing cells reactive with cell-grown virus antigen. Taken together, our results suggest that mammalian cells are a viable option for the production of influenza virus vaccines.

Conventional influenza vaccines are standardised using the single-radial-immunodiffusion (SRD) test where reagents are produced from egg-grown viruses. It is important to ensure homology between SRD antigen reagents and test vaccines. There was concern that cell-grown vaccines may differ antigenically from corresponding egg-grown vaccines, which may in turn affect vaccine standardisation. In an examination of five cell-grown vaccines from two companies, only one vaccine was affected by the specificity of the SRD test. Options for standardisation of cell-grown vaccines are considered and recommendations are made for further studies.

The Vero cell line has been used by Pasteur-Merieux-Connaught (PMC) since 1982 with the Cell Bank's system to produce, at the 142nd passage, inactivated polio vaccine (IPV), oral polio vaccine (OPV) and rabies vaccines. The safety of the cell line has been regularly validated at the WCB level according to the WHO and European Pharmacopeia requirements for absence of bacteria, fungi, mycoplasma and viruses. Special emphasis was devoted to establishing the absence of simian viruses (SV40, SIV, Retro-D virus, simian CMV). Reverse Transcriptase (RT) activity was also negative. At low level of passage, the Vero cells are not tumorigenic. Vaccines have been prepared in low passage level Vero cells and, together with the excellent downstream purification, has resulted in excellent safety as attested by pharmacovigilance of more than 100 million doses of IPV during 12 years, more than 20 million doses of rabies vaccine during 10 years and more than one billion of OPV during six years.

This presentation gives an overview of the guidance which is available in the EU as it would be applicable to licensing requirements for influenza vaccines produced on banked cells. Whereas ensuring compliance of cell banks would be relatively straightforward, ensuring compliance of new virus seeds (and possibly harvests) with requirements concerning adventitious viral contamination needs further evaluation.

Advances in membrane technology have allowed the expansion of the size-exclusion removal principle to viruses of concern in the processing of pharmaceutical drug products derived from biological fluids and cell-culture techniques. Direct flow- and cross-flow filters are complementary techniques for virus removal and may be used either independently or as an adjunct to other virus clearance methods. Representative virus titre reduction data for microfiltration and ultrafiltration membranes are presented along with a validation model using bacteriophages as challenge viruses. Non-destructive filter integrity tests before and after filtration and a stringent process validation regime are applied to enhance product safety.