Innovation in animal-free culture and growth media

Cell survival, proliferation, and function rely on a complex array of nutritional, hormonal, and stromal cues, and companies are looking for animal-free culture and growth media that can provide the correct chemical environments for cultured meat production.

Initial research and development used animal-based sera such as fetal bovine serum (FBS) harvested from pregnant cows during slaughter to support cultured meat growth and differentiation. But these sera are prohibitively expensive for commercial production, and their use flies in the face of sustainability and ethics claims. They are also a potential source of infectious disease agents and microbial contaminants, including endotoxins, antibiotics, and other components that raise safety concerns. As more cultured meat startups move towards commercialization, there has been an outpouring of innovation in the production of animal-free media and media components.

Mosa Meats' landmark paper in 2022 demonstrated muscle differentiation without using FBS, a critical step in cultured meat production, and their commitment to animal-free production contributed to their B Corp Certification earlier this month. Approval from the Singapore Food Authority earlier this year means Good Meat can commercialize chicken meat cultivated without animal-based sera.

In 2022, IntegriCulture, Japan, announced the commercial release of basal medium, which is made of ingredients already approved as food and does not contain any serum from animals. In January, Multus, UK, announced that they were building a production plant to develop food-safe growth media at a commercial scale. LA-based startup Omeat, launched in June, is selling Plenty, its alternative to FBS. In August, Simple Planet, Korea's Leading Cultivated Meat Company, announced their probiotics-based serum-free culture medium. 

Last week, Israeli company BioBetter, Ltd. opened its first food-grade pilot facility to produce growth factors for the cultivated meat industry using tobacco plants. Iceland's ORF Genetics' newest product, MESOkine, is a defined barley seed extract containing purified recombinant growth factors. IngredientWerks, US, is also using engineered crops and has filed patents on myoglobin, leghemoglobin, and casein expression in corn.

Dyadic, US, has developed stable cell lines to produce animal-free recombinant bovine serum albumin using filamentous fungal-based microbial protein production. The cultivated meat company Aleph Farms, Israel, and Israeli biotech company Enzymit announced the successful expression of insulin substituent proteins in E. coli. Future Fields is scaling up the production of growth factors for cultivated meat growth media using fruit flies as production vehicles. Their products were recently awarded the prestigious ACT Environmental Impact Factor Label.

Larger companies, such as Millipore Sigma that already supply animal-based culture media and inputs are also providing animal serum-free products, and bioprocessing firm CellRev, UK, is working with Saint-Gobain Life Sciences, US, on media recycling, removing toxins and metabolites and replenishing media so that it can be reused – another area of potential innovation.

Vireo is proud to support and partner with innovators expanding the animal cruelty-free market through novel cell culturing media and enabling the commercial production of animal-free meat.