RESEARCH ARTICLE Enabling Low Cost Biopharmaceuticals: A Systematic Approach to Delete Proteases from a Well-Known Protein Production Host Trichoderma reesei Christopher P. Landowski1*, Anne Huuskonen1, Ramon Wahl2, Ann Westerholm- Parvinen1, Anne Kanerva3, Anna-Liisa Hänninen3, Noora Salovuori3, Merja Penttilä1, Jari Natunen3, Christian Ostermeier2, Bernhard Helk2, Juhani Saarinen3, Markku Saloheimo1 1 VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Espoo, Finland, 2 Novartis Pharma AG, Basel, Switzerland, 3 Glykos Finland Oy, Helsinki, Finland *
[email protected] OPEN ACCESS Abstract Citation: Landowski CP, Huuskonen A, Wahl R, Westerholm-Parvinen A, Kanerva A, Hänninen A-L, The filamentous fungus Trichoderma reesei has tremendous capability to secrete proteins. et al. (2015) Enabling Low Cost Biopharmaceuticals: Therefore, it would be an excellent host for producing high levels of therapeutic proteins at A Systematic Approach to Delete Proteases from a Well-Known Protein Production Host Trichoderma low cost. Developing a filamentous fungus to produce sensitive therapeutic proteins reesei. PLoS ONE 10(8): e0134723. doi:10.1371/ requires that protease secretion is drastically reduced. We have identified 13 major journal.pone.0134723 secreted proteases that are related to degradation of therapeutic antibodies, interferon Editor: Monika Schmoll, AIT Austrian Institute of alpha 2b, and insulin like growth factor. The major proteases observed were aspartic, glu- Technology GmbH, AUSTRIA tamic, subtilisin-like, and trypsin-like proteases. The seven most problematic proteases Received: March 27, 2015 were sequentially removed from a strain to develop it for producing therapeutic proteins. Accepted: July 13, 2015 After this the protease activity in the supernatant was dramatically reduced down to 4% of the original level based upon a casein substrate.