application of animal cell culture for studies in gene expression

Applications of animal cell culture for studies in gene expression

Hormones, metabolites and regulatory molecules are the products naturally expressed in animal cells. However other cell products are also produced purely as a manufacturing unit e.g viral vaccines. Some time cell itself may be a product. A whole range of therapeutic proteins are now being produced in pharmaceutical industry and even vaccines are prepared in cultured recombinant mammalian cells.

They main objectives of animal cell culture are:

1. For study of biochemistry and biophysics of cell growth and division.
2. For research in animal viruses.
3. For production of wide range of biological products of commercial interest such as immunoregulators, monoclonal antibodies, enzymes, hormones and viral vaccines.

List of vaccines prepared by cell culture:
Viruses are obligate inter-cellular parasites and earlier viral vaccines were made in intact animals. Today except for Influenza and yellow fever vaccines which are made in developing chick embryo, all other vaccines are made by growth of virus in cell culture.

Fallowing are the list of vaccines prepared by cell culture

• Measles- Chick embryo fibroblast
• Polio(Inactivated)- Monkey kidney cells
• Polio(Activative)- Monkey kidney cells, human diploid cells, uerocells.
• Rabies- Human diploid cells, uerocells
• Rubella- Rabbit kidney cells, duck embryo cells, human diploid cells.
• Hepatitis B- Chinese hamster ovary cells.

There are some viral genes which have been successfully expressed in vaccinia recombinants. These can be useful to produce noval vaccines some examples are:

1. Hepatitis B virus surface antigen
2. Herpes simplex virus glycoprotein D
3. Rabbis virus glycoprotein G
4. Influenza virus haemoglutinin
5. Malaria sporozoite antigen
6. Therapeutic proteins

List of Therapeutic produced in recombinant animal cells

• Tissue plasminogen activator(tpa)- It is useful in thrombosis. This enzyme dissolve fibrin.
• Interleukin-2 - For cancer therapy
• Tumor necrosis factor- For cancer therapy
• Factor VIII- For haemophilia A
• Factor IX- For haemophilia B
• Erythropoietin- For anaemia
• Granulocyte macrophage colony stimulating factor- For stimulating WBC production after cancer therapy
• Interferon Beta- For cancer therapy
• Interferon Alfa- For cancer therapy
• Tumor specific antigens- For inclusion in diagnostic test kits.
• Fibroblast culture- For skin therapy to facilitate wound healing and burn repairing.
• To evaluate new drugs and toxic chemicals- Genotoxicity can be assessed by using incorporation of radio active nucleotides as a measure of DNA repair.