With the global race toward sustainable cellular aquaculture heating up, one major roadblock remains: the need for costly, animal-derived FBS in fish cell culture. At acib, we’re eliminating that barrier. Leveraging our proven stabilizer technology, and hands-on experience with fish satellite cells, we’re building the next-generation, serum-free medium-customized for fish. Faster cell growth, lower costs, zero ethical compromise.
Background
Cellular aquaculture holds great promise for addressing global protein demands while avoiding the ethical and ecological issues of traditional fish farming. However, fish muscle cell culture still depends heavily on fetal bovine serum (FBS), which is expensive, variable in quality, ethically outdated and has no place in next-gen seafood production.
Technology
The aim of the project is to formulate a cost-efficient, fully defined, and FBS-free medium for the expansion of fish muscle cells. This would be a critical enabler for cultivated seafood production, accelerating the transition towards sustainable food sources.
The project would build on acib’s validated key stabilizer-GF combinations from mammalian systems (TRL 4-5) and early fish cell fish cell data for:
- Identification of growth factors (GFs) crucial for the proliferation of fish muscle satellite cells, using a combination of literature mining and acib’s protein simulation pipeline (AlphaFold, RosettaFold, etc.).
- Expression and biological screening of selected GFs on relevant fish cell lines (e.g., DLEC, MACK1 or any of your choosing), assessing their ability to stimulate proliferation without FBS.
- Substitution of FBS using a rational mixture of potent GFs and validated stabilizers, selected from acib’s proprietary stabilizer library (e.g., methylcellulose, STC), to improve GF stability and reduce media cost.
Offer
We seek partners (e.g., cultivated seafood companies, feed producers, cell media developers) to co-develop the FBS-free media platform, share access to fish cell lines, and jointly pursue R&D and commercial valorization.
acib would exclusively and fully transfer all intellectual property developed in this project to you as our company partner/investor.
Contact us to develop the next gold standard for cultivated seafood and make FBS obsolete!
Experts:
Dr. Aleksandra Fuchs, Dr. Petra HeidingerDevelopment status:
Technology Readiness Level 4-5 (in mammalian cell lines)Technology Readiness Level 2 (for fish cell lines)
Keywords:
Fish Cell Culture, Cultivated Seafood, Serum-Free Medium, Fetal Bovine Serum Replacement, Growth Factors (GFs), Cell Culture Stabilizers, Protein Stabilization, Medium Optimization, Fish Satellite Cells, Food-Grade Media Components, Recombinant Growth Factors, Yeast-Based Expression, GRAS Stabilizers, Cost-Efficient Bioproduction, Cell Line Adaptation, Fish Muscle Cell Proliferation
Picture: acib
