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P5014
The Impact of Automated Clone Selection on the Cell Line Generation Process
Presenter Alexandra Alderton, Pfizer Global Research & Development, United Kingdom
Additional Authors: Paul Abel, Jonathan Ronksley, Sarah Tucker, Darren Cawkill
Cell lines stably expressing a recombinant protein are an integral part of screening strategies in drug discovery.  However, the development of new cell lines is a time-consuming, labour intensive process often requiring the manual screening and maintenance of large numbers of clones. Not only is the manual processing of clones extremely labour intensive, but it also limits the number of clones that can be screened and thus reduces the probability of identifying a clone with the most appropriate pharmacological properties. 
At Pfizer UK, we have recently integrated a Cello™ automated cell culture system (The Automation Partnership) into our cell line generation process to resolve the limitations described above.  Cello™ automates the routine culture, maintenance and tracking of clones, handling all aspects of clone growth and selection.  The use of the Cello™ effectively increases the numbers of clones that can be screened from 100s to 1000s, allowing the parallel progression of different projects and multiple strategies within the same project.   We will present data from our experiences with Cello™, including case-studies from cell lines that have been generated using this technology.  We will also discuss the impact that Cello™ has had on the rest of the cell line generation process, in particular the need for higher throughput assays for clone screening. Session P6 Compound Management