The Baculovirus Expression Vector System (BEVS) is one of the most efficient systems for production of recombinant proteins and consequently its application is wide-spread in industry as well as in academia. Since the early 1970s, when the first stable insect cell lines were established and the infectivity of bacu-lovirus in an in vitro culture system was demonstrated (1, 2), virtually thousands of reports have been published on the successful expression of proteins using this system as well as on method improvement. However, despite its popularity the system is labor intensive and time consuming. Moreover, adaptation of the system to multi-parallel (high-throughput) expression is much more difficult to achieve than with E. coli due to its far more complex nature. However, recent years have seen the development of strategies that have greatly enhanced the stream-lining and speed of baculovirus protein expression for increased throughput via use of automation and miniaturization. This chapter therefore tries to collate these developments in a series of protocols (which are modifications to standard procedure plus several new approaches) that will allow the user to expedite the speed and throughput of baculovirus-mediated protein expression and facilitate true multi-parallel, high-throughput protein expression profiling in insect cells. In addition we also provide a series of optimized protocols for small and large-scale transient insect cell expression that allow for both the rapid analysis of multiple constructs and the concomitant scale-up of those selected for on-going analysis. Since this approach is independent of viral propagation, the timelines for this approach are markedly shorter and offer a significant advantage over standard bacu-lovirus expression approach strategies in the context of HT applications.

245 Background: Next generation sequencing has revolutionised genomic studies of cancer, having facilitated the development of precision oncology treatments based on a tumour’s molecular profile. We aimed to develop a targeted sequencing panel for application to treatment-refractory solid tumor types with particular focus on tumours of the stomach cancer, plus test for utility in FFPE, fluid sample and cancer cell lines. Methods: “CancerMaster” is custom RNA probes for target enrichment sequencing. It consists of all unions (7,811 regions, 2.5Mb) of reported exons of 524 tumor and immune related genes. The panel contains special RNA probes, which enables detection of microsatellite instability, Epstein-Barr virus and Human papillomavirus. Also, the CancerMaster panel analyzes 524 genes as well as genomic signatures including microsatellite instability (MSI), tumor mutational burden (TMB) and HLA allele. FFPE samples and 49 gastric cancer (GC) cell lines were collected for performance and application testing. Panel sensitivity and precision were measured using well-characterised DNA controls (n = 117), and specificity by Sanger sequencing, pyrosequencing, FoundationOne CDx. Results: We achieved a mean coverage of 1,032x, with sensitivity and specificity of >99% and precision of >97%. In this study, we evaluated 26 Yonsei Cancer Center (YCC) GC cell lines and 23 GC cell lines from other sources (ATCC, KCLB, and JCRB). Application to 49 gastric cancers cell lines resulted in detection of copy number variant (CNV), single number variant (SNV) and small InDel aligned to whole exome sequencing data. In addition to previous novel EBV infected cell line (YCCEL1/YCC-10, J Gen Virol. 2013), we observed amplification and overexpression of receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) including HER2 (YCC-19, 32, 33, 38), EGFR (YCC-11, 21), Met (YCC-31, 34), and FGFR2 (YCC-28, 30) in YCC GC cell lines; confirming that protein was overexpression by Western blot or Flow cytometry in 19/49 (38.8%). Interestingly, amplification of RTKs was detected mutually exclusive pattern with other RTK amplification. Conclusions: We have developed and validated an analytically-validated panel for application to cancers of treatment-refractory types.