Ingredients

Multus Launches Animal-Free Alternative to Fetal Bovine Serum for Cultivated Meat

British biotech company Multus has launched Proliferum B, a new animal component-free alternative to fetal bovine serum (FBS) designed to accelerate cultivated meat production.

Proliferum B, which is the first product developed using Multus’ machine learning-driven system, is said to address costs, reliability, and ethical concerns related to FBS. It accelerates early R&D without depending on the controversial and costly serum or having to develop a product.

“We need to make media development much more efficient so cultivated meat companies can progress and scale faster”

Co-founder and CEO Cai Linton comments, “We want cultivated meat to be affordable and accessible to all. To achieve that, we need to make media development much more efficient so cultivated meat companies can progress and scale faster.”

Developed with industry-relevant cells

Multus explains that the use of FBS in cell culture poses high costs and ethical issues, and existing replacements have been expensive and slow to develop, hindering market progress. It adds that there are no products available on the market for cultivated meat using industry-relevant cells.

Proliferum B
Image courtesy of Multus

In contrast, Proliferum B has been developed using bovine cells and has been tested against FBS on various cell types — primary bovine fibroblasts, immortalized bovine satellite cells, and immortalized murine pre-adipocytes — demonstrating “superior performance such as shorter doubling times and consistent performance across multiple passages.”

Supporting the Industry

Multus is committed to supporting the cultivated meat industry by providing high-performance, scalable, animal-free, and food-safe growth media solutions. The company offers various ISO 22000-certified products, including attachment molecules, other serum replacements, and ingredients.

Earlier this year, Multus unveiled what it claims is the world’s first commercial-scale production plant for serum-free growth media for the cultivated meat industry. The milestone was achieved following a previous, £7.9 million funding round to build the facility and £1.6 million in early-stage funding to launch Proliferum M, a growth medium for large-scale use in the food industry. 

Linton adds, We believe machine learning can radically accelerate lab research, so we created a system specifically to do this. Proliferum B marks its first product, taking nine months from lab to market. We’re now keen to get this into customers’ hands and to support their journey.”

Proliferum B is available for sampling, and specifications can be requested from Multus.

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