A plea to reduce or replace fetal bovine serum in cell culture media

Abstract

To the Editor,Fetal bovine serum (FBS) is a universal growthsupplement of cell and tissue culture media. FBS is anatural cocktail of most of the factors required for cellattachment, growth, and proliferation, effective formost types of human and animal (including insect)cells. Although in use for more than 50 years, FBS hasnever been fully characterized. Recent proteomic andmetabolomic studies revealed approx. 1,800 proteins(Anderson and Anderson 2002; Anderson et al. 2004)and more than 4,000 metabolites (Psychogios et al.2011) present in serum. However, the use of serum incell culture also bears a number of disadvantages.These disadvantages can either be seen from: (a) ascientific, cell biological point of view, since serum ingeneral is an ill-defined mixture of components inculture media, with qualitative and quantitative,geographical and seasonal batch-to-batch variations,(b) from biosafety aspects, since FBS may containadverse factors, like endotoxin, mycoplasma, viralcontaminants or prion proteins, (c) from ethicalperspectives in terms of animal protection argumentsregarding the harvest and collection of FBS frombovine fetuses, and (d) in terms of recent concernsabout the global supply versus demand of FBS. As aconsequence, a number of strategies were developedto reduce or replace the requirement for FBS in cellculture media.FBS is a by-product of the beef packing industry.Thus, the supply is dictated by many factors, includingbeef consumption, dairy product consumption, feedprices, environmental factors such as drought, cattleimport and export, governmental farm policies (Sha-iler and Corrin 1999), and the outbreak of diseases(foot and mouth disease, BSE) (Asher 1999; Dormont1999; Even et al. 2006; Wessmann and Levings ).The availability of FBS has changed dramatically overthe past few years (Fujimoto 2002). Therefore, allefforts and attemptsshouldbe undertaken toovercomethe expected shortfall in FBS supply. In the case ofFBS, supply versus demand models do not followtypical economic principles. Normally, supply can beadjusted to meet the demand. However, in case ofFBS, supply and demand operate independently ofeach other. In addition, there is a severe geographicalmismatch between the supply of and the demand forFBS. Demand is highest in US and Europe, while themajor sources of FBS are far away—in Brasil,Argentina, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand,and Central America, since in those countries huge