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Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) represent the fastest growing class of therapeutic proteins. The increasing demand for mAb manufacturing and the associated high production costs call for the pharmaceutical industry to improve its current production processes or develop more efficient alternative production platforms. The experimental control of IgG fucosylation to enhance antibody dependent cell cytotoxicity (ADCC) activity constitutes one of the promising strategies to improve the efficacy of monoclonal antibodies and to potentially reduce the therapeutic cost. We report here that the EB66 cell line derived from duck embryonic stem cells can be efficiently genetically engineered to produce mAbs at yields beyond a 1 g/L, as suspension cells grown in serum-free culture media. EB66 cells display additional attractive grown characteristics such as a very short population doubling time of 12 to 14 hours, a capacity to reach very high cell density (> 30 million cells/mL) and a unique metabolic profile resulting in low ammonium and lactate accumulation and low glutamine consumption, even at high cell densities. Furthermore, mAbs produced on EB66 cells display a naturally reduced fucose content resulting in strongly enhanced ADCC activity. The EB66 cells have therefore the potential to evolve as a novel cellular platform for the production of high potency therapeutic antibodies.

International audience; Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) represents the most frequent and deadliest primary brain tumor.Aggressive treatment still fails to eliminate deep brain infiltrative and highly resistant tumor cells.Human Vg9Vd2 T cells, the major peripheral blood gd T cell subset, react against a wide array oftumor cells and represent attractive immune effector T cells for the design of antitumor therapies.This study aims at providing a preclinical rationale for immunotherapies in GBM based on stereotaxicadministration of allogeneic human Vg9Vd2 T cells. The feasibility and the antitumor efficacy ofstereotaxic Vg9Vd2 T cell injections have been investigated in orthotopic GBM mice model usingselected heterogeneous and invasive primary human GBM cells. Allogeneic human Vg9Vd2 T cellssurvive and patrol for several days within the brain parenchyma following adoptive transfer and cansuccessfully eliminate infiltrative GBM primary cells. These striking observations pave the way foroptimized stereotaxic antitumor immunotherapies targeting human allogeneic Vg9Vd2 T cells in GBMpatients.