Year: 2014-15

Company: Gilead Sciences

Liaison(s): Brian Mickus

Gilead Sciences is a biopharmaceutical company that
researches, develops and markets innovative treatments
for life-threatening diseases. Gilead’s therapeutic
areas of focus include HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, serious
respiratory, cardiovascular, and metabolic conditions,
cancer and inflammation. Since their founding 27
years ago, Gilead Sciences has grown rapidly, with
a portfolio of 19 marketed products and a growing
pipeline of investigational drugs and more than 7,000
employees across six continents.
Process development for monoclonal antibody (mAb)
production is a time-consuming, labor intensive and
expensive effort due to the number of individual steps
and the complexity involved. This project focused on
industrial applications of systems biology approaches
to accelerate and optimize cell culture/microbial
process development. The team assessed the state of
the art technologies that are currently available and
in development through both commercial vendors
and academic institutions encompassing genomic,
transcriptional, proteomic, metabolic flux, and other
systems biology analyses.
In the fall semester, the team analyzed the –
omics technology landscape, including genomics,
transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics,
specifically with the aim of using these technologies
to aid with cell line/process development of the next
generation of CHO cell lines. The team generated a
comprehensive database of –omics vendors, end-users,
and major academic researchers in this area. The team
created a list of technologies in each –omic category and
further evaluated state-of-art technology through of a
series of systematic interviews and Q&A sessions. Based
on the results, recommendations were made to Gilead.