Kemp Proteins
Scientist
on
April 8, 2020
This installment of Supplier Spotlight® is on Kemp Proteins – a leading provider of gene-to-protein bioservices.
What is your company’s mission?
Our mission is to provide leadership and innovation to establish and maintain a world class Proteins Bioservices company supported by best practices and quality processes as well as to deliver to our clients a consistent and high-quality service experience. Kemp Proteins continuously strives to improve the processes and capabilities by investing in its personnel, state-of-the-art equipment and continuous improvement quality programs.
What products and services do you offer?
For two decades Kemp Proteins has provided our pharma, biotech, diagnostic and academic researchers a route to produce their novel proteins and antibodies. These services have been used in development of new therapeutics and diagnostics, none more so than during the COVID-19 pandemic. We have utilized our core expertise in gene to protein expression in mammalian and insect cells, virus-titering, hybridoma development, cell-line development, protein characterization and purification to provide solutions to researchers throughout the United States.
What problems does your organization solve?
Since proteins are generated in living cells, production can be highly complex, often requiring post-translational modifications to enhance protein’s bio-activity. We excel at expressing proteins in quantity and developing the sophisticated purification processes that will ensure purity while retaining activity and yield present challenges that require specialized expertise to resolve in a short time frame.
What are the most innovative tools and technologies that you offer?
Kemp Proteins has worked with the baculovirus expression vector system (BEVS) since 1987. We have collected a wealth of knowledge by expressing thousands of proteins over the years. In 2019, we transferred that knowledge of BEVS, BacMam and Mammalian expression and purification into an extensive library of best practice SOPs under our “Quality First” ISO 9001 umbrella. For BEVS, we have expertise in the design of expression constructs, production of recombinant viruses and optimization of expression conditions.
We are well known for our BacMam platform as well. We have developed a BacMam based transduction system for protein expression in mammalian cells to the 100-liter scale. Some advantages of BacMam transduction over traditional mammalian transient transfection are the precision of gene delivery and the ease of gene amplification and purification.
Kemp Proteins has a highly developed mammalian transient expression system based on the PEI transfection reagent. We formulate the transfection reagent in-house and combined with our optimized media and feeds we can provide large-scale mammalian transient expression services cost-effectively. We routinely express a wide variety of proteins including viral glycoproteins, enzymes and protein complexes in HEK-293 and CHO cells at scales up to 100-liters. Kemp Proteins is skilled at the design of mammalian expression constructs for gene-to-protein applications. We are proficient at running fed-batch processes from the 1-liter to 100-liter scale for the production of recombinant proteins from stable HEK and CHO cell lines with typical cell densities above 1x107 cells per mL.
For our clients, the payoff of these innovations is high-quality services, data-packages, and low endotoxin proteins for their important projects.
What are your competitive advantages?
Clients trust Kemp to make novel proteins for the first time in small test batches for internal testing. Then we scale the product runs in our stirred-tank bioreactors and SUBs to help them understand and fine-tune their processes before they proceed to large-scale GMP manufacturing. When they’re ready to move forward to cGMP manufacturing, Kemp can supply its developmental data in a form they can take to diagnostic and cGMP biomanufacturing.
Who are your clients?
Our clients work at biotech, pharma, vaccine, diagnostic, agriculture, veterinarian - large, medium, start-ups, VCs, government, academia. In summary, we view our clients as the scientists, not necessarily the companies or organizations where they work. We consider ourselves experts in our own field of protein development and expression helping experts in their own fields of proteins and the application of such proteins in diagnostic and therapeutic research.
What new products and services are you developing in 2020?
New services: Kemp Proteins recently launched a state of the art hybridoma and stable cell line development services. The company is using proprietary methods to produce thousands of clones. That includes the molecular device’s ClonePix2 platform for robotic picking of colonies over 10,000/ 8 hours. For high-throughput screening Kemp Proteins use the Hamilton Star and Octet BLI technology. Finally, we use a CloneSelect Imager to record clone development for clonality assurance. Our proven hybridoma development specialists deliver our clients application-specific, characterized, clonality-assured monoclonal-antibodies.
New products: Kemp Proteins has recently developed a system for the production of biotinylated antibodies and non-antibody proteins. The system is based on the post-translational biotinylation at the site of Avitag sequences inserted into the ORF and catalyzed by the enzyme BirA. Kemp Proteins created a BirA BacMam virus that is used to transduce host cells prior to transfection with plasmid(s) carrying Avitag sequences. We have successfully produced biotinylated IgG in HEK-293 cells utilizing this protocol.
Where are your laboratories and offices located?
Kemp Proteins is based in Frederick, MD. During 2019, we quadrupled our facility footprint, tripled personnel and commissioned new equipment targeted at specific service opportunities, hybridoma services. By implementing high-quality standards, our team has gained full AAALAC accreditation for the facility in February 2020 and near completion of ISO 9001:2015 registration.
During this period of global uncertainty, we want to let you know that Kemp Proteins remains open and operational. We continue to serve our clients with updated lab protocols that protect the well-being of our team and community.
We realize turnaround times, communication, and quality materials remain the focus of Kemp and our clients, especially researchers that are using Kemp to assist their COVID-19 projects. Before shipping, we will ask for a confirmation of lab status before any materials will be sent to your location.
How has Scientist.com helped your business?
Scientist.com has helped Kemp Proteins introduce our service offerings to a number of large pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. The platform accelerates client engagement as scientists can immediately move into discussions about their projects with us rather than waiting for legal departments to get CDAs in place. Additionally, the seamless transition to a PO eases the transactional phase of the project, so we can get down to work - helping our clients express their proteins and developing their hybridomas.