Serum-free and Animal-free Research: More than Just an Ethical Choice

As animal testing is coming under increased scrutiny, many researchers are opting for alternative in vitro cell-based technologies to replace animal models. The cell culture market, however, has long been dominated by animal-derived products, which are known to elicit unwanted experimental effects and limit reproducibility in results. This is a substantial problem for multiple sectors including biotherapeutics, where reliance upon poorly defined animal-derived culture media and reagents can be an obstacle when seeking to transition from preclinical research into clinical trials.

Many of these complications can be minimized by replacing animal/serum-containing products with highly regulated, well-defined animal-free cell culture solutions. Animal-free and serum-free alternatives bring a number of advantages to cell-based research and can help boost success when looking to scale-up production in biomanufacturing.

Read this white paper to learn about the challenges presented by animal-derived cell culture media and supplements and discover how the adoption of next generation animal-free media/supplements can improve reproducibility in cell culture as well as biotherapeutic research.

Key points discussed:

• The ethical, regulatory, and scientific drawbacks associated with the use of animal-derived cell culture reagents
• Benefits of adopting animal-free media and media supplements for basic and therapeutic research
• Commercially available animal-free solutions, including cell culture media, supplements, and recombinant proteins