Genetic engineering approaches to improve posttranslational modification of biopharmaceuticals in different production platforms

The number of approved biopharmaceuticals, where product quality attributes remain of major importance, is increasing steadily. Within the available variety of expression hosts, the production of biopharmaceuticals faces diverse limitations with respect to posttranslational modifications (PTM), while different biopharmaceuticals demand different forms and specifications of PTMs for proper functionality. With the growing toolbox of genetic engineering technologies, it is now possible to address general as well as host- or biopharmaceutical-specific product quality obstacles. In this review, we present diverse expression systems derived from mammalians, bacteria, yeast, plants, and insects as well as available genetic engineering tools. We focus on genes for knockout/knockdown and overexpression for meaningful approaches to improve biopharmaceutical PTMs and discuss their applicability as well as future trends in the field.