ClearX9™: an efficient alternative to fetal bovine serum for growing animal cells in vitro

ABSTRACT Fetal Bovine Serum (FBS) is a nutrient-rich fluid that contains nutritional and macromolecular factors essential for cell growth. Every year millions of pregnant cows are slaughtered in search of FBS leading to huge environmental consequences. Here we report ClearX9™ - an affordable, sustainable, ethical, and effective replacement for FBS. ClearX9™ cell culture medium was used to grow HeLa (cervical cancer cells), HEK293T (embryonic kidney transformed cells) and Nthy Ori-3-1 (primary thyroid follicular transformed epithelial cells) and showed encouraging growth patterns and good cellular health. Compared with the FBS-enriched cell culture medium, ClearX9™ scored positive on all the parameters suggesting ClearX9™ as a credible alternative to FBS. In future, more work is required to establish the efficacy of ClearX9™ in toxicology testing, bio-manufacturing, regenerative medicine, and vaccine research. HIGHLIGHTS ClearX9™ provides good nutritional support for the growth of animal cells ClearX9™ cell growth performance is comparable to the serum-enriched medium ClearX9™ maintains a healthy morphological profile of cells during division ClearX9™ generates a stress-free environment within cells ClearX9™ does not require animal slaughter and reduces carbon footprint ClearX9™ has applications in biotechnology and cell cultivated meat industry