# Glycoengineering of CHO cells to express recombinant alpha-1 antitrypsin

> **NIH NIH R41** · NEUIMMUNE BIOLOGICS, INC. · 2022 · $274,441

## Abstract

ABSTRACT
 Alpha-1 antitrypsin (A1AT) is well-established as a biotherapeutic used for the treatment of alpha-1
antitrypsin deficiency, and shows promise for treating a variety of other diseases. However, A1AT augmentation
therapy carries unnecessary risk since it relies upon the weekly transfusion of plasma-derived product, which
presents supply chain and contaminant risks. This could be remedied with recombinant A1AT, if it adequately
matches or improves upon the plasma-derived product, including its post-translational modifications and
functional attributes. However, major hurdles to the development of recombinant A1AT exist, since post-
translational modifications, such as glycosylation, impact drug activities and half-life, and it has remained
challenging to match glycosylation of recombinant A1AT to the plasma derived isoforms. Here we developed a
large panel of diverse GMP-ready glycoengineered CHO (geCHO) cell lines that allowed us to discover a host
cell line, geCHO-L, that matches glycosylation of the plasma derived product. Here we will demonstrate our
platform not only allows us to identify a CHO clone matches the glycosylation of the approved product, but that
we can also match the function and half-life of the approved A1AT to enable the manufacturing of a recombinant
A1AT to increase the safety and protect the supply of therapeutic A1AT. We further engineer the recombinant
A1AT to obtain a product with improved activity and half-life as a candidate therapeutic for alpha-1 antitrypsin
deficiency and other diseases.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10484110
- **Project number:** 1R41HL164260-01
- **Recipient organization:** NEUIMMUNE BIOLOGICS, INC.
- **Principal Investigator:** Nathan Enoch Lewis
- **Activity code:** R41 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $274,441
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2022-09-22 → 2024-09-21

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10484110

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10484110, Glycoengineering of CHO cells to express recombinant alpha-1 antitrypsin (1R41HL164260-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10484110. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*